Judge clears second US Navy Seal

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/8641326.stm

Version 0 of 1.

A second US Navy Seal has been cleared of helping to cover up the alleged beating of an Iraqi suspected of killing four Blackwater guards.

A Navy judge found Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe not guilty of dereliction of duty, officials said.

Earlier this week Petty Officer Julio Huertas, 28, was also found not guilty of dereliction of duty.

A third sailor court martialled over the alleged abuse of Ahmed Hashim Abed is yet to go on trial.

Mr Abed was arrested last September and is accused of masterminding the killing of four Blackwater private security guards in Falluja in 2004.

Their bodies were dragged through the streets, burned and hung from a bridge.

PO Keefe was not charged with assaulting Mr Abed, but of failing to protect him in the hours after he was captured and brought to a US military base.

In the previous court martial, a US sailor told the court he saw Navy Seal PO Matthew McCabe punch Mr Abed.

He said PO Huertas and PO Keefe were in the room at the time of the assault.

PO Huertas and PO Keefe were tried in Iraq, as Mr Abed cannot leave the country. PO McCabe will go on trial in May.

US security firm Blackwater is at the centre of controversy surrounding the "outsourcing" of war, where private contractors take on tasks normally carried out by soldiers.