The U.S. military says it had no choice but to pull out of Iraq by year’s end because Baghdad would not give U.S. troops immunity from local prosecution. U.S. troops overseas almost always are covered by a so-called Status-of-Forces Agreement, which bars local prosecution in favor of giving jurisdiction to the U.S. military and its Uniform Code of Military Justice. But not always. As Stars and Stripes reports, a South Korean court on Tuesday ordered a U.S. soldier imprisoned for 10 years for his brutal rape of a local girl in September:
The U.S.-South Korea status of forces agreement allows servicemembers to be turned over to South Korean custody if servicemembers are suspected of heinous crimes and law enforcement officials request it, which is what happened in [Pvt. Kevin Lee] Flippin’s case. In lesser cases, suspects remain in U.S. custody but must be made available to investigators.
