Opening arguments begin in Navy SEAL case

NORFOLK

Lt. Nicholas Kadlec opened the government's case against Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe by reciting a few lines from the Navy SEAL creed.

"The ability to control my emotions and my actions, regardless of circumstance, sets me apart from other men."

"Uncompromising integrity is my standard."

"I am always ready to defend those who are unable to defend themselves."

McCabe failed to live up to those standards last September, Kadlec said, when he punched a handcuffed, hooded Iraqi detainee and let him lie bleeding on the floor shortly after his capture.

The 24-year-old sailor, a member of SEAL Team 10 at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach, is being court-martialed on three misdemeanor charges: assaulting alleged Iraqi terrorist Ahmed Hashim Abed, failing to protect him, and lying to investigators.

McCabe pleaded not guilty to all charges. If convicted, he could face a bad-conduct discharge and a year in jail.

"This starts as a story you don't want to believe, and it becomes a story you have to believe," Kadlec said during opening arguments Tuesday. The prosecutor urged the seven-member jury - composed of three enlisted sailors and four officers - to find the "moral courage" to hold a decorated Navy SEAL accountable.

Neal Puckett, one of McCabe's defense lawyers, painted a very different picture of what occurred Sept. 1 after SEALs helped Iraqi police arrest Abed, whom he called "this terrorist, this insurgent, this mass murderer."

Abed is thought to have helped organize the murder of four American contractors in Fallujah in 2004. He's also been described as someone who recruited insurgents and helped finance and set up homemade bombs.

Puckett told jurors there will not be any scientific evidence linking McCabe to Abed's alleged injuries, and noted that Abed could not identify his attacker because he was blindfolded.

Some of the evidence prosecutors will present to show Abed's injuries, including a photo of the inside of his bruised lip, has a more reasonable explanation, Puckett said: a canker sore that the detainee chewed on in order to bloody his clothes and make it appear that he'd been hit.

By the end of the trial, which is expected to last at least two more days, the defense will have exceeded the standard of reasonable doubt required for the jury to acquit McCabe of the charges, Puckett said. "You're going to truly believe he's innocent - because he is."

Abed will not testify. But Tuesday afternoon, the jury listened to a recording of his deposition last month in Iraq.

At that proceeding, Abed responded to questions from prosecutors and McCabe's military defense lawyers about what happened the night he was arrested.

Through a translator, Abed described being woken up inside his Fallujah home by a team of Iraqis and Americans, put on a helicopter and taken to a succession of offices at a U.S. base.

Soon after he was taken into one office and sat in a chair, Abed said, someone started hitting him. He said the force of the blows knocked him to the ground, and after he was helped to his feet, someone began kicking him.

He said the violence lasted about five minutes.

Abed denied being involved with terrorist groups and said he learned about the 2004 contractor killings - and the burning and public display of the victims' bodies - by watching television.

In response to a question about $6,000 in U.S. currency found in his home the night of his arrest, Abed said it belonged to his mother, who he claimed sold her jewelry to pay for a planned pilgrimage to Mecca.

Abed testified in two related trials last month in Iraq. Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas and Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe, both assigned to McCabe's unit, were acquitted of failing to protect the detainee.

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com