Fort Carson – An Army officer charged with murder in the suffocation death of an Iraqi general was using an interrogation technique approved by his commander and was under intense pressure to extract information, his lawyer said today.
Defense attorney Frank Spinner also said Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush did not suffocate, as an autopsy report said, but died from an irregular heart rhythm caused by heart disease and the stress of interrogation.
Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. is accused of killing Mowhoush in 2003 in Iraq. Prosecution documents say Mowhoush had been placed headfirst in a sleeping bag and bound, and that he died with one officer sitting on him. The documents say an electrical cord may also have been involved but did not say how.
In his opening statement, Spinner said Welshofer’s company commander had approved the use of the sleeping bag on Mowhoush, who helped finance the Iraqi insurgency and had information that could have saved U.S. soldiers’ lives.
The prosecutor, Capt. Elana Matt, said Mowhoush’s death came after days of interrogation and repeated beatings. She did not accuse Welshofer of participating in the beatings.
Matt said Welshofer failed in his obligation as a soldier to take the “moral high ground,” and she asked jurors to hold him accountable.
Earlier today, the judge refused to let prosecutors bring up a second, unspecified allegation against Welshofer about an event the day before Mowhoush died.
Prosecutors made the request in writing, but under military judicial rules the document was not made public, and few details were discussed in court. Spinner referred to the event as the “rooftop incident.” The wrangling over evidence came in the second day of Welshofer’s court-martial, which is expected to last all week.
On Monday, the judge rejected a defense request to dismiss the murder charge after Spinner argued that a commander had tried to influence the outcome of the case.
Spinner’s motion was based on testimony that an officer in Welshofer’s jury pool had remarked that the Fort Carson commander felt some recent court-martial juries had been too lenient.
The officer, Col. David Saffold, denied on the stand that he had made such a statement. Saffold was not chosen for the jury.
