Soldier Found Guilty of Desertion in Iraq

FORT STEWART, Ga. – A military jury convicted a U.S. soldier Friday of desertion for leaving his combat unit in Iraq in protest of an “oil-driven” war.

Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia of the Florida National Guard was found guilty by a jury of four officers and four enlisted soldiers. Jurors deliberated almost two hours.

He faces up to a year in jail and a bad conduct discharge and was to be sentenced Friday afternoon.

Mejia, 28, failed to return after a two-week furlough in October and was missing from the Army for five months before turning himself in in March.

Mejia, who has called the conflict an “oil-driven war,” testified Thursday that he disobeyed orders to return to his unit because he planned to seek status as a conscientious objector.

Mejia said he became upset after seeing civilians hit by gunfire and watching an Iraqi boy die after confusion over which military doctor should treat him.

He also said he also believed he should have been discharged under a National Guard regulation limiting service of non-U.S. citizens to eight years. Mejia, a citizen of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, served for nine years.

Military prosecutors argued Mejia, an infantry squad leader, abandoned his troops and didn’t fulfill his duty.

“The defense says he accomplished all his missions. Except the most important one – showing up,” lead prosecutor Capt. A.J. Balbo said in closing arguments.

Defense lawyer Louis Font said Mejia made “an honest mistake of fact.”

“This case clearly is about what was in the accused’s mind,” Font said. “He had an honest and reasonable view that because he had become a conscientious objector, he would not be required to serve in Iraq anymore.”

After the verdict was read, Mejia hugged his mother, Miami peace activist Maritza Castillo, and she kissed him on the cheek.

“He feels that he still did the right thing, and he did it under his conscience and his beliefs. His feelings have not changed,” Castillo said.

Mejia’s lawyers had argued that he walked away from the war partly to avoid orders to abuse Iraqi prisoners, such as using sleep-deprivation tactics with blindfolded detainees, and in at least one instance by loading a pistol next to their heads.

But the judge, Col. Gary Smith, ruled that evidence on the “legality and morality” of prisoner treatment in Iraq was irrelevant to the desertion charge that Mejia shirked his duty by leaving the Army for five months.

Mejia’s application to be deemed a conscientious objector is being considered separately from his court-martial on the desertion charge.

In his objector application, he claims he saw Iraqi prisoners treated cruelly when he was put in charge of processing detainees last May at al-Assad, an Iraqi air base occupied by U.S. forces.