Ranger alleges war crimes

Bank-robbery suspect wants to put government on trial
By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Dec. 10, 2006

An Army Ranger accused of holding up a Tacoma bank plans to use the notoriety of his case to reveal what he characterizes as systematic war crimes -- rapes, homicides and political assassinations -- committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Spc. Elliott Sommer is allegedly part of a four-member Ranger crew from Fort Lewis involved in the armed robbery Aug. 7 of a Bank of America branch, court documents show.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested Sommer, who has dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship, near Peachland, B.C., on Aug.11.

The 20-year-old Sommer is under house arrest at his mother's Peachland home pending the outcome of an extradition request by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington.

Sommer said he wants to use extradition proceedings in Canada to put the U.S. government on trial.

"We are looking to be able to prosecute 30 to 40 members of Task Force 626 for war crimes, including rape, murder, et cetera," Sommer said in a telephone interview this week.

Task Force 626 is a classified military unit that includes elite Delta Force and CIA operatives whose mission is to capture or kill "high-value" targets in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sommer, who said he served in Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan in 2005, portrays himself as driven by moral imperatives and an intense sense of duty to the helpless people he saw victimized by U.S. soldiers and intelligence officers.

Although he stopped short of admitting to the bank robbery, he suggested that the "hypothetical motive" for such a crime might have been creating a high-profile platform for speaking out about war crimes.

Asked if he was going public with the allegations to curry favor in advance of his criminal trial, Sommer said: "This isn't going save my ass. If I committed a bank robbery, I deserve to go jail. That's acceptable.

"Sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. This is not a crafty method of gaining public support," he said.

"I have seen people issue orders to cover up the deaths of as many as 16 innocent people," Sommer said. He spoke of one incident in which he alleges a commanding general in Afghanistan ordered the cover-up of such an execution.

"That is a bad policy. Those policies are what I'm standing up against."

Sommer recalled one instance in which he helped a CIA officer and a Delta Force sergeant load two 105 mm howitzer shells into a vehicle in Baghdad's Green Zone. He learned later that they detonated the shells, killing four men -- one of whom was a radical Islamic politician who was the front-runner for elective office.

Sommer also spoke of U.S. forces sending captives "to hell -- the Battlefield Interrogation Facility."

"There are people in the BIF who have been there since the beginning of the war who are probably innocent. The place is worse than Abu Ghraib (prison)."

Sommer said he never participated in any of the atrocities he's alleging, nor did he file any formal complaints. "I couldn't go to the military because of the risk of arrest. They don't take kindly to people speaking out on this kind of thing," he said.

Military officials at Fort Bragg, N.C., home of Special Operations Command, said Wednesday that they were trying to learn more to verify or deny what they publicly can about Sommer's story.

The 75th Ranger Regiment has headquarters at Fort Benning, Ga., and comprised of three battalions, one of which, the 2nd Battalion, is based at Fort Lewis. Officials at Fort Benning could not be reached for comment.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Dion, who is prosecuting the bank-robbery case, noted that charging documents assert that Sommer's motive was "to fund a criminal organization that Sommer planned to operate in Canada" that would challenge the Hells Angels for supremacy in drug running and other crimes.

"Our concern is to prosecute a bank robbery," Dion said. "Whatever else is in Sommer's head is not relevant to the prosecution. We don't have to prove why Sommer chose to do this robbery. Whatever the motive doesn't justify this kind of crime."

That the government is at least paying attention to Sommer's allegations is underscored by discovery documents turned over by the government to defense attorneys for the other Rangers facing trial.

The documents contain blacked-out sections that detail Sommer's war-crime allegations, an attorney familiar with the case said. The attorney said the government is concerned that some of Sommer's allegations may contain classified information. Sommer's plan to use the extradition hearing as a forum for his war-crime allegations is feasible, according to Canadian legal experts on extradition.

"There are a couple of provisions under which he could gain some purchase," said Michael Bolton, a Vancouver, B.C., criminal lawyer who specializes in international criminal law and extradition.

"Bank robbery is not in any way, shape or form a political offense," Bolton said. "But the (Canadian Justice) minister could also refuse to make a surrender if he is satisfied that the surrender would be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances," he said, quoting the extradition law.

The other ground would be if the minister is satisfied that the request for extradition is made for the purpose of punishing the person by reason of his "political opinion" or "that the person's position may be prejudiced for any of those reasons."

"There's stuff that his lawyers could marshal in his defense," Bolton said.

Whether Sommer prevails in preventing extradition to the United States, legal proceedings could take months or even years.