Michael Behenna: Imprisoned for Killing a Terrorist

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Front Page Magazine:

Last month, a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was filed on behalf of former Airborne Ranger 1st Lt. Michael Behenna. Behenna has been locked up in Leavenworth since 2009. He’s serving a sentence of 25 years (he’s eligible for parole after 15) in the homicide of Ali Mansur Mohamed in Iraq in 2008. This ruling, said Behenna’s lawyers, will decide whether service-members will have the same right to self-defense in a combat zone that police officers have every day on duty.

Mohamed was a suspected terrorist with links to Al Qaeda in Iraq. On April 21, 2008, Behenna and his platoon were returning to their base in the Salahuddin Province in Iraq when their convoy was hit by an Improvised Explosives Device (IED). Two of his men, Specialists Adam Kohlhaas and Steven Christofferson, were killed.

 

 

On May 5, 2008, Behenna received a tip that a terrorist linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq and to the IED attack was staying in a house in the town of Butoma. Behenna and his men arrested Mohamed that evening and they found a cache of ammunition, a RPK light machine gun, and a passport with Syrian visas.