An Army officer from Colorado accused of murdering two Iraqi civilians has been convicted of lesser charges, but will spend no time in prison.
Capt. Carl Bjork, a decorated soldier from Evergreen, received only a reprimand from a military panel and a loss of one-third of his salary for one year, according to his father.
That sentence was “clearly a huge victory and relief for us all. We are all overjoyed,” Peter Bjork wrote in an email from Iraq.
Peter Bjork, a Denver lawyer, went to Iraq to attend the trial and speak on behalf of his son at the sentencing hearing. The panel also “heard from a number of Carl’s subordinates, and an equal number of his superiors, including some majors and colonels,” he wrote.
The case against Capt. Bjork began with two revenge killings four years ago.
Ibrahim Hamid Jaza, a city police chief in the often violent Anbar province, was arrested for killing two men, Wasim Ibrahim Al-Kubaysi and Gayth Shakir Saba’ar, in retaliation for the kidnapping and public beheading of a member of his family.
In turn, the Iraqi police officials who carried out the killings told investigators that they had been ordered to do so by the American officer in charge of training them – Capt. Bjork.
In Iraq, the military panel acquitted Bjork of murder but convicted him of two counts of negligence in those deaths, plus reckless endangerment for setting a booby trap of a weapons cache, according to his father.
Bjork faced a life sentence if he had been convicted of murder, and up to seven years in prison on the lesser charges. He was defended by Victor Kelley, a retired Marine who formed the National Military Justice Group and has defended hundreds of other servicemen and women.
In Colorado, Bjork’s high school friends rallied to support him, and a soldier who had served in Bjork’s platoon organized a Facebook campaign to “save an American soldier’s life.”
