It took the jurors less than two days of deliberations to find Green guilty on all 17 criminal counts, which included rape, premeditated murder and obstruction of justice.

Three other soldiers were given life sentences in the March 2006 atrocity that was devised over whiskey and a game of cards at a traffic check point in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Green, who was named as the ringleader, was tried in civil court after being discharged from the army due to a “personality disorder” before his role in the crime came to light.

While Green confessed to the slayings when army investigators were called to the scene the next day, the involvement of US soldiers did not come to light until stress counselors talked to the squad several months later.

Green’s mother, father and brother — who were not present during the trial at his request — are scheduled to testify on his behalf during the sentencing phase.

His attorney said the verdict was not a surprise because “we never denied his involvement in this case.

“The goal in this case has always been to save our client’s life,” Darren Wolff told reporters. “We’re going to go to the most important phase, which is the sentencing phase, and we’re going to accomplish that goal.”

Lead prosecutor Marisa Ford declined to speak to the media after the verdict was read.

She told jurors during closing arguments that the grueling conditions and tragic losses suffered by Green’s unit in no way excused his actions.

“The evidence in this case suggests the defendant was acting purposefully and intentionally with full knowledge of what he was doing,” Ford said.

She said Green and other soldiers changed their clothes and disguised their appearance to throw suspicion on insurgents.

They also burned the body of the 14-year-old girl, Abeer al-Janabi, and their own clothes to destroy any evidence that might link them to the crime, she said.

“This was a planned, premeditated crime which was carried out in cold blood,” Ford told the jurors.

But Green’s other defense attorney told the jury that the stresses of war had left the soldier a broken man in a strange world.

“Madness. Madness. That’s the only possible word,” Scott Wendelsdorf said in closing arguments Wednesday.

Wendelsdorf blamed the crime on the lack of leadership at Traffic Checkpoint 2, where Green served with the other soldiers involved in the crimes at the Janabi home.

“They didn’t come there as criminals,” he said. “They were made criminals at TCP 2.”

He noted that Green had been diagnosed as having Combat Operational Stress Disorder three months before the attack, and contended that former private first class James Barker and former specialist Paul Cortez took advantage of Green’s mental condition to carry out the crimes.

Jurors last week heard the stories of Cortez and Barker, both of whom admitted to going to the Janabi family home with Green.

The pair told jurors they raped Abeer, while Green took her six-year-old sister and her mother and father to another room, where he shot them to death.

Cortez testified that Green proceeded to rape Abeer and then placed a pillow over the girl’s face and shot her three times with an AK-47.

Private Jesse Spielman also received a life sentence for raping Janabi and participating in the murders while private Bryan Howard was sentenced to 27 months in jail for acting as a lookout.

Spielman, Barker and Cortez will be eligible for parole in ten years under military rules.

Ex US-soldier found guilty of rape, murder

According to The Guardian

In a shock move on the third day of his trial, the 73-year-old calmly pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him, including negligent homicide and enslavement. He had already admitted four of the charges against him: incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment.

ritzl’s lawyer suggested his change of heart came as a result of the psychological impact of yesterday’s gruelling court session, in which he watched a recording of Elisabeth giving evidence.

“All I know is that he asked to see a psychiatrist in his cell [after hearing yesterday's testimony] and after that decided to give a full confession,” Rudolf Mayer told the Guardian.

Responding to reports that Elisabeth had been in court in person yesterday and today watching proceedings from an adjacent room especially set up for victims of sexual attacks, Mayer said he could not confirm that because it would breach the rules of in camera proceedings.

“You can draw your own conclusions from that. I’m the wrong person to ask. If she was there [yesterday], it could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, in terms of his confession,” he told the Guardian.

Today, a 30-strong scrum of photographers followed a van leaving the court after the case was adjourned. The vehicle reportedly contained Elisabeth.

For the first time in the trial, Fritzl arrived in the courtroom without covering his face with a blue folder.

Opening the proceedings, the judge, Andrea Humer, said she wanted to return to Elisabeth’s testimony from yesterday.

“Do you have anything to say to me?” Humer asked Fritzl. “I recognise that I am guilty,” he responded, adding, “I regret it.”

“Why are you saying that now?” asked Humer. “Because of the videotape testimony of my daughter,” said Fritzl.

Referring to the murder charge, Humer asked why Fritzl had not done more to help his newborn baby boy, Michael, who died from breathing difficulties shortly after being born in the cellar in 1996.

“Did you not realise he was gravely ill?”

Fritzl responded: “I just overlooked it. I thought the baby was going to survive. I should have realised. It was only yesterday I realised for the first time how cruel I was to Elisabeth. I had never realised it before.”

Fritzl had previously admitted burning the child’s body in an incinerator in his back garden, but had denied he was responsible for its death. The surviving twin, Alexander, was one of three of Elisabeth’s seven children who “appeared” above ground at the Fritzls’ house in Amstetten, west of Vienna. Alexander was the last of the three children to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie.

Fritzl also changed his plea from partial to full guilt on the rape charge and admitted the enslavement charge.

For the first two days of his trial, Fritzl had also denied that he enslaved Elisabeth in the purpose-built cellar he constructed under his own home.

The jury has been told that Elisabeth was imprisoned under Ybbsstrasse 40 at the age of 18. Her father forced her into the cellar on 29 August 1984 after putting a cloth over her nose and mouth. He then secured a chain around her stomach so she could not escape. The next day he raped her. As she bore his children over the next 24 years, he repeatedly raped her in front of them, the court heard.

Christiane Burkheiser, the prosecuting lawyer, described the cellar as Fritzl’s ­”playground”, where he used his daughter like a “toy”.

The case was adjourned until tomorrow morning. The eight members of the jury, assisted by three judges, will decide the sentence after hearing closing statements. Fritzl is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Josef Fritzl: the man who held his daughter captive for 24 years pleads guilty

The latest hoaxes came after it was separately revealed that the perpetrator of Wednesday’s bloodbath, Tim Kretschmer, had probably not given an Internet warning — contrary to what investigators had previously been led to believe.

Those behind the message that officials initially believed was a chilling warning by Kretschmer — citing weapons and intent to go to his old school in Winnenden — have yet to be discovered.

German police in Lower Saxony, hundreds of kilometres (miles) from the scene of Wednesday’s rampage, said they arrested a 21-year-old man after he boasted in a chat room that he would carry out a similar crime.

“I have a gun and I’m going to kill everybody,” read the message.

The man, who has not been named and who faces up to three years in jail or a fine, said that it was meant “as a joke.”

French police dealt with a similar scare, arresting at 6:00 am (0500 GMT) an 18-year-old youth after he too posted a “joke” website warning of a shooting spree at a school in the Paris suburbs.

“In Raincy (high school) there will be blood — I have weapons,” this message read.

In the Netherlands, an 18-year-old man was arrested at 4:00 am (0300 GMT) in Rijsbergen for a similar warning posted on a US website, police sources said.

The teen was arrested at home after having been traced through the IP address of his computer, said a police statement. He admitted to being the author.

And on Thursday, Swedish police took in for questioning a 17-year-old suspected of posting a picture of himself posing with a weapon on an Internet forum, along with a threatening message against a high school.

On Friday, a school at Ilsfed, near the scene of Wednesday’s killing, was cordoned off and searched by police after another Internet threat, but it turned out to be a false alert, local police spokesman Roberto Monaci told AFP.

Dressed in black combat gear and armed with a gun taken from his father’s bedroom, Kretschmer shot dead eight girls, one boy and three female teachers at his old school.

He then killed a passer-by outside a psychiatric clinic where he had been due to receive treatment, hijacked a car and shot two others at a car dealership.

By this time hundreds of armed commandos were on his trail, some in helicopters, and Kretschmer died in a shootout with police around 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the school. Police believe he shot himself.

The interior minister of the state where this took place said on Friday that the 17-year-old — described as unremarkable and reserved if socially awkward and suffering from depression — had announced his intentions on the Internet.

But on Friday the minister, Heribert Rech, admitted that he had been duped.

“Some crazy person obviously put out this dreadful false message,” Rech said. “It must have been made up afterwards.”

After analysing Kretschmer’s computer, on which he had spent hours playing “shoot-em-up” video games, a spokesman for local police said no trace had been found of the message.

The picturesque town near Stuttgart was still in a state of shock on Friday, with people laying flowers and candles outside the Albertville secondary school, which remained closed.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend a memorial service on March 21 in the town, her spokesman said on Friday.

Two policemen injured in Wednesday’s car park shootout were still in hospital, as were five pupils from the school, police said. Some the pupils had gunshot wounds and others had broken bones after jumping out of windows.

Hoax arrests across Europe after German massacre

Lawrence County District Attorney John Bongivengo said Monday that Pennsylvania law doesn’t permit him to file a criminal homicide charge against Jordan Brown in juvenile court.

Brown is charged as an adult with using his own 20-gauge shotgun to kill 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk Friday morning.

The gun was a Christmas gift from the boy’s father, who was training him to be a hunter, the New York Daily News reported Sunday.

Because he’s charged as an adult, Brown is in the county jail — albeit separated from adult inmates. His attorney, Dennis Elisco, says being locked up with adults is inappropriate for a child and will file motions Monday to move the case to juvenile court and to let the boy’s father post bail so he can get out of jail.

“I don’t think anybody wants him there,” Elisco said, referring to the county jail.

Houk was eight months pregnant with Brown’s father’s child, and also had two daughters, 7 and 4, who lived in the rural home with the Browns where authorities said she was slain as she lay in bed about 8 a.m. Friday.

After the shooting, the boy hopped onto a school bus with Houk’s oldest daughter, police said. He was picked up from school several hours later after some tree trimmers called 911 when Houk’s youngest daughter told them she thought her mother was dead.

Elisco said a judge likely won’t hear his motions right away. Until then, he hopes to get the fifth-grader’s school to send him assignments in jail.

“I want him to be occupied and busy and back, essentially, in school,” Elisco said. “I wouldn’t say he’s in good spirits. He’s confused. He looks and acts like a typical 11-year-old.”

Elisco said jail officials can’t even find clothes to fit the 4-foot-8 boy.

“They put a shirt on him, he’s swimming in it, and his pants are cuffed up about 10 times,” Elisco said.

Lawrence County Warden Charles Adamo told the Associated Press on Sunday that he wanted to speak to a judge about moving the boy from an adult lockup to a juvenile detention center.

“I’m just going to speak to the judge [on Monday] because I don’t have the facilities to accommodate somebody who’s 11 years old,” Adamo said.

Adamo said his 300-inmate jail cannot offer proper long-term care for Brown, of Wampum.

The boy has been in the jail some 45 miles northwest of Pittsburgh since early Saturday, Adamo said. He’s being held in one of four 10-by-8-foot cells in the jail’s booking area, where officials check on him every 15 minutes.

The boy gets the same food as the other inmates, but cannot receive visitors — except for his attorney — because doing so would require him to mingle with adult inmates, Adamo said. Even something as simple as letting the boy shower would require locking down an entire cellblock, most of which hold up to 63 inmates, Adamo said.

Brown’s cell has a sink, toilet and a bunk and the inside can be seen from a desk where a booking clerk sits, Adamo said.

Brown is charged as an adult because Pennsylvania law allows prosecutors to charge children as young as 10 with criminal homicide.

For now, the boy faces a preliminary hearing on Thursday to determine if he’ll stand trial. If a judge agrees the case might belong in juvenile court, a dual-purpose hearing will determine if there’s evidence to support the charges, but Elisco will also have to prove the boy can be rehabilitated through a juvenile system that only has jurisdiction until the boy turns 21.

Elisco said the boy has not confessed to the shooting, and he doesn’t believe the physical evidence will support the police contention that the boy killed Houk, execution-style, with one shot to the back of her head.

Police and Bongivengo haven’t discussed a motive, and Elisco used an expletive to dismiss claims by Houk’s family that the boy might have been jealous of Houk.

“I think it’s all bull … there’s no animosity,” Elisco said.

But two national experts on blended families told the AP the case has all the earmarks of one fueled by the natural tensions that could have occurred as Brown and his father attempted to blend with Houk and her daughters. Brown’s father and Houk had been together since May and got engaged in December, her family said.

“It looks awful from the outside and sort of unspeakable, but these are the kinds of feelings that are pretty normal in a new stepfamily. You just hope there’s not a loaded gun around,” said Patricia Papernow, a psychologist from Hudson, Mass., who heard about the case on the national news.

“I’ll bet the boy had some big feelings he didn’t know what to do with,” said Papernow, author of “Becoming a Stepfamily: Stages of Development in Remarried Families.

Papernow and Jeannette Lofas, a former TV journalist who formed the Stepfamily Foundation as she struggled to deal with her own stepchildren in the 1970s, said most people don’t realize how much work it takes to blend two families.

“Two out of three stepfamilies fail,” Lofas said. “Would you take your child on a plane to San Francisco with a one-third chance of making it there? That’s what millions of people are doing every day when they try to form these families.”

“Often kids get quite close or may get close to their parent in that time. When the parent recouples, it’s a wonderful thing for the adult, they’re gaga in love, but the kids feel kind of left behind,” Papernow said.

“Many children feel that,” Lofas agreed. “But few act it out to the extent of shooting the stepmother to be. It’s just a caricature of what goes on in these situations.”

No Choice But to Charge Boy Murder Suspect as an Adult – Sari Sari