Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

A recently discharged Army private has been arrested on charges of raping an Iraqi woman and killing her and three family members four months ago in their house, federal prosecutors said Monday.

The former soldier, Steven D. Green, 21, had recently been discharged from the Army for a "personality disorder," the prosecutors said. They said Mr. Green and other soldiers had discussed the rape in advance and carried out the crimes after drinking alcohol, leaving a checkpoint and changing from their uniforms into black clothing.

A criminal complaint made public by the prosecutors on Monday charged that Mr. Green shot the three family members, including a child, with an AK-47 assault rifle found in the house in Mahmudiya before he and another soldier raped the woman. Citing interviews with unnamed participants, the document alleges that Mr. Green, his face covered with a brown T-shirt, then "walked over to the woman and shot her several times." It says the soldiers returned to the checkpoint with blood on their clothes and agreed that the episode was "never to be discussed again."

Mr. Green, who appeared in federal court on Monday in Charlotte, N.C., was arrested there on Friday, the prosecutors said. The documents they made public provided the first official account of the rape and killings, whose broad outlines emerged last week after American military officials in Baghdad said they were investigating the incident. The military originally thought Iraqi insurgents were responsible after several Iraqis approached an American checkpoint and said a family had been killed in their home, the charging documents said.

The rape victim was identified in the American court documents as a 25-year-old woman, but there have been conflicting accounts of her age. In Iraq, the mayor of Mahmudiya said Monday that the rape victim had been only 15 years old.

Military officials have said they first learned about the rape and killings last month, after Mr. Green left the Army. He had received an honorable discharge after only 11 months in the service because of what the charging documents described only as a "personality disorder." His departure was unrelated to the incident, the Army official said, adding that he had no more information about Mr. Green's disorder.

Army officials and prosecutors said that, before his arrest, Mr. Green might have been planning to attend a funeral service Saturday at Arlington National Cemetery for Specialist David J. Babineau, one of three soldiers ambushed at a checkpoint in Yusufiya in June. Two other soldiers who survived the ambush were taken prisoner by insurgents and later killed and mutilated.

Though Mr. Green and the three ambush victims reportedly came from the same unit, the 502nd Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne, so far, the Army official said there was no evidence that the Americans had been abducted in retaliation for the rape and killing of the Iraqis.

At least three other soldiers suspected of involvement in the rape and killing of the Iraqis are being held in a military base in Iraq, but several soldiers interviewed by prosecutors, identified in charging documents only as "sources of information," said that Mr. Green was responsible for the killings and that he and another unidentified soldier, referred to as a "known participant," committed the rape.

The incident came to light last month after soldiers in the regiment were undergoing "a combat stress debriefing" related to the ambush of three Americans, the charging documents said. After entering the house, the compliant alleged that Mr. Green herded family members into a back bedroom and closed the door. After shots were heard, he emerged, telling the other soldiers, "I just killed them. All are dead," according to one unidentified soldier.

Participants in the attacks later told another soldier who had remained behind at the checkpoint to "dispose of the AK-47 in a canal across the street," the document says.

The Iraqi mayor, Mr. Fadhil, said the body of the rape victim, Abeer Qasem Hamzeh, had multiple bullet wounds and burn marks. Her sister, Hadeel, was shot in the head, he said, reading from a hospital report; her father, Qasem Hamzeh Rasheed, who was in his mid-40's, suffered head trauma; and her mother, Fakhariya Taja Muhassain, was shot several times.

Three sons were at school at the time of the March 12 attack, the mayor added.