JAG Greatly Reduces Sentence of Erik Hooks’ Killers: The United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps has amended the prison sentence of two U.S. Army military policemen who last September beat to death detainee Erik Hooks in a Guantanamo Bay shower stall, a JAG source told Real Raw News.
JAG Greatly Reduces Sentence of Erik Hooks’ Killers: The United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps has amended the prison sentence of two U.S. Army military policemen who last September beat to death detainee Erik Hooks in a Guantanamo Bay shower stall, a JAG source told Real Raw News.
The United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps has amended the prison sentence of two U.S. Army military policemen who last September beat to death detainee Erik Hooks in a Guantanamo Bay shower stall, a JAG source told Real Raw News.
As reported in December, the two MPs accepted a 20-year plea agreement instead of dealing with a court martial that could have ended in a death sentence and which JAG had sought to avoid for fear of drawing parallels between the behavior of its staff and the conduct of military police that habitually tortured Jihadi detainees at Abu Ghraib under the Bush administration. Still, that sounded more like an excuse than an explanation, for JAG sources had previously admitted to employing unorthodox tactics—waterboarding, sleep deprivation, electric shock punishment—to coerce confessions from Deep State criminals.
The stiff plea deal, our source said, was meant as an unambiguous message: vigilantes would not be tolerated.
JAG’s hardline stance, though, appeared to soften in mid-December as Admiral Crandall’s office was inundated with hundreds upon hundreds of letters calling for the release of Hooks’ killers. Officers and enlisted alike, including many of the killers’ fellow MPs, had beseeched the admiral to commute the sentence based on Hooks’ predatory behavior while in custody. Hooks had often taunted guards, saying FEMA would abduct their families and put them in federal Fusion Centers, the politically correct terminology for FEMA concentration camps. He had told numerous MPs he had a pipeline to the outside world and could disappear anyone with the snap of his fingers.
Hooks knew the MPs’ full names even though Camp Delta military police cover uniform nametags with strips of black tape to conceal their identities from Deep Staters looking to exact vengeance. Staff are taught to avoid mentioning one another’s surnames within earshot of detainees.
“The guards say Hooks knew their last names but say they never broke protocol. Yes, slipups happen. In our world, it’s customary to address an enlisted man or officer by rank and last name, and it’s prevalent even in casual, off-duty settings for soldiers to use last names instead of first. No system is perfect. If we assume Hooks had their identities, the question is, could he have made good on his threats? We’ll never know. But the outpouring of support for the guards was enormous.”
Admiral Crandall, he added, thoughtfully read each letter and interviewed eight other MPs who claimed Hooks had threatened them. Three backed up the assertion that Hooks had somehow gleaned their identities and admitted to having thought about murdering Hooks themselves.
“The difference, of course, is they didn’t,” our source said.
On December 28, Admiral Crandall resentenced Hooks’ killers, and the commutation reduced their initial 20-year bid to a mere three years, inclusive of time already served—approximately four months. The admiral did not supply an explanation, nor had he consulted with JAG’s senior staff before the decision. Our source said the prisoners were given the good news a day later.
Whether the admiral buckled to peer pressure or genuinely felt 20 years was too harsh is anyone’s guess—unless he, at some point, elaborates on his reasons.
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