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vincentML -> RE: 95 Year old German medic on trial for (9/12/2016 1:43:21 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: WhoreMods
I think the word might be "complicity" rather than "awareness" in this case.
According to the Daily Mail (I know, I know) it is 'awareness.'
In 1969 the following happened in Vietnam:
Calley was charged on September 5, 1969, with six specifications of premeditated murder for the deaths of 109 South Vietnamese civilians near the village of Son My, at a hamlet called My Lai, simply referred to as "My Lai" in the U.S. press. As many as 500 villagers—mostly women, children, infants, and the elderly—had been systematically killed by American soldiers during a bloody rampage on March 16, 1968. Upon conviction, Calley could have faced the death penalty. On November 12, 1969, investigative reporters Seymour Hersh[9] and Wayne Greenhaw[10] broke the story and revealed that Calley had been charged with murdering 109 Vietnamese.[11]
Calley's trial started on November 17, 1970. It was the military prosecution's contention that Calley, in defiance of the rules of engagement, ordered his men to deliberately murder unarmed Vietnamese civilians despite the fact that his men were not under enemy fire at all. Testimony revealed that Calley had ordered the men of 1st Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry of the 23rd Infantry Division to kill everyone in the village. In presenting the case, the two military prosecutors, Aubrey Daniel and John Partin, were hamstrung by the reluctance of many soldiers to testify against Calley. Some refused to answer questions point-blank on the witness stand by citing the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Calley claimed he was following orders. His immediate superior denied any such orders. Calley was found guilty and received a life sentence.
The American people were outraged at the sentence.
In a telephone survey of the American public, 79 percent disagreed with the verdict, 81 percent believed that the life sentence Calley had received was too stern, and 69 percent believed Calley had been made a scapegoat.[14]
Many others were outraged not at Calley's guilty verdict, but that he was the only one within the chain of command who was convicted. At the Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War January 31–February 2, 1971, veterans expressed their outrage, including 1st Lt. William Crandell of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division:[15]
We intend to tell who it was that gave us those orders; that created that policy; that set that standard of war bordering on full and final genocide. We intend to demonstrate that My Lai was no unusual occurrence, other than, perhaps, the number of victims killed all in one place, all at one time, all by one platoon of us. We intend to show that the policies of Americal Division, which inevitably resulted in My Lai, were the policies of other Army and Marine divisions as well. We intend to show that war crimes in Vietnam did not start in March 1968, or in the village of Son My or with one Lieutenant William Calley. We intend to indict those really responsible for My Lai, for Vietnam, for attempted genocide.
Calley was given clemency and released by President Nixon.
Like Lt. Calley, Hubert Zafke was doing his duty. What makes Zafke's trial even more egregious to me is his age, his apparent lack of actual participation, and my suspicion that his trial is political in some fashion. Maybe the Germans are acting still out of a sense of national guilt and scapegoating him?
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