A U.S. federal court has charged an Army veteran of the Iraq war with murder and rape for the March killing of an Iraqi woman and three members of her family.
Federal prosecutors in Charlotte, North Carolina charged Steven Green Monday. Green is a 21-year-old who was recently discharged from the Army with what is being called a "personality disorder."
Court documents say Green and three other soldiers allegedly drank alcohol on the night of March 11 and plotted the rape of an Iraqi woman who lived in a house near the traffic checkpoint they manned near the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad.
Green allegedly took the woman's parents and five-year-old sister into a bedroom and shot them to death. An FBI affidavit says Green and another soldier then raped the woman before Green shot her in the head.
If convicted, Green could face the death penalty. No other soldiers have yet been charged in the case.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.