US:A US army medic who fled his base and refused to return to Iraq with his unit was sentenced yesterday to eight months in prison for desertion.
Mexican-born combat medic Agustin Aguayo, who describes himself as a conscientious objector, is one of the first US military personnel to be convicted of desertion in relation to the Iraq conflict. The ruling comes as support in the US wanes for the war.
Aguayo (35) pleaded guilty to going absent without leave and missing his deployment, but denied charges of full desertion.
But Col Peter Masterton, the judge at the court-martial in southern Germany, said the court had found Aguayo guilty as charged and sentenced him to eight months.
Aguayo has been fighting for three years to be recognised by the army as a conscientious objector. He served one term as a medic in Iraq in 2004, during which he said he refused to load his gun while on guard duty. "I believe I am an objector to war," he told the court. "When I hear privates say they want to kill someone or slash people's throats . . . stuff like that hurt me."
He escaped through a window and left his base in Schweinfurt, Germany, in September 2006, shortly after missing his unit's redeployment, and went missing for several weeks before turning himself over in California.
"I tried to do everything right, obey all the rules, but I couldn't continue. I couldn't bear weapons," he said.
The father of two has already spent 161 days behind bars and could have been sentenced to up to seven years.
The case follows the high-profile trial in February of First Lieut Ehren Watada - the first known court-martial of a US army officer for publicly refusing to serve in Iraq. Watada's court-martial ended in a mistrial. The US department of defence recorded 4,494 deserters in 2005.