THE US REPORT

By Kay B. Day

Capt. Carl Bjork with children in Iraq. Those who served with Bjork said he read the Koran in order to better understand the Iraqi people. [Photo courtesy of Bjork family.]Following a link within the statistics program here at The US Report, I was surprised to find information indirectly related to the case of Capt. Carl Bjork. I found the de facto backgrounder in a post written in 2007 by Michael Yon who was embedded in Hit. Yon is a writer who also served as a Green Beret and has extensive experience reporting from war zones.

Ironically I found Yon’s relevant article by chance, but his very detailed account of events in Hit in Anbar Province details one of Bjork’s accusers before the captain faced any charges. There were a few surprises.

TUSR has followed this case since its inception, and, based on available facts, we have openly advocated for redress for the captain. Bjork will face trial on murder charges. Bjork’s sister Erica sums the situation up: “[C]arl was sent back to the States and was told that he was under investigation for a double murder that occurred during his 2006-2007 deployment in Hit, Al Anbar Province, Iraq. His accusers, who are the only witnesses/evidence in this alleged crime, are four disgraced former Iraqi police who are imprisoned for the murder of two Iraqi civilians - believed to be Iraqi al queda.[sic]”

According to Erica, the captain was not present at the alleged murder—“He simply trained the Iraqi police as part of his duty.”

Not much is really known, apart from that. We do know those who grew up with or fought with Bjork hold him in the highest regard. A Facebook group formed to support Bjork has grown to 7, 983 members.

Bjork’s primary accuser is a man named Col. Ibrahim Hamid Jaza. Yon unravels events in Iraq that caused Jaza to morph from hero to villain. Yon describes Jaza’s contributions to eliminating AQI (al Qaeda Iraq) from the region and he offers an interesting aside—AQI, said Yon, “beheaded Hamid’s son on a soccer field in the center of Hit in 2005.”

Media and The US Report have reported Jaza’s brother was beheaded—that information came from a number of primary sources familiar with Bjork’s case. It’s not hard to imagine a quest for revenge from a parent whose son has been beheaded by terrorists.

Yon details Jaza’s fall from grace—from a hero praised for his dedication to purging AQI to a man accused of corruption, murder and deal-making with insurgents. The sea-change in local public opinion occurred in an atmosphere where tribal politics reign. Truth in such circumstances can be elusive.

Yon puts Jaza’s story in context, explaining that locals credited the colonel (called General by those who knew him) for his “aggressive stand against the Al Qaeda (AQI) terrorists who had brazenly made Anbar province a home base and slaughter pad with their marketplace car bombs, beheadings and reputation for hiding bombs intended to kill parents in the corpses of dead children they’ve gutted.”

Radio Free Europe reported about Hamid: “AP reported on May 30 [2007] that al-Jaza was praised by the U.S. military for his leadership in fighting insurgents in Hit during Operation Police Victory in February.”

On May 31, RFE reported al Jaza and 15 others—including his brother and 14 bodyguards—were arrested “following an investigation into alleged charges of corruption, murder, and crimes against the Iraqi people.”

Yon points out, “General Hamid was not actually a prisoner of war: his problems are with the Iraqi government, not with ours.” He then points out Hamid was not a general but a colonel.

With the colonel's May, 2007 arrest amid the political conflagration surrounding any war, the life of Capt. Carl Bjork, recipient of a Bronze Star commendation, changed forever. If he is successful in winning his case, he will face a mountain of debt to pay it off—one reason we remind readers Bjork’s family has established a defense fund.

Bjork’s civilian attorney is Victor Kelley, founder of the National Military Justice Group.

The government has released little information about Bjork. Yon said in his 2007 post that Iraqi officials “wanted Hamid gone.”

We have to ask ourselves what lengths might those officials go to in order to achieve their goal? And what lengths might the colonel go to to save his own skin?

And why is an American soldier who by all accounts has served our country honorably caught in the middle of what appears to be a political quagmire?

Yon's article is lengthy, more along the lines of a feature in a print magazine. But it's an unvarnished look at the circumstances surrounding Bjork's case before there WAS a case, and that makes it more relevant in my opinion. The article is exceptionally written; Yon deftly pulls the reader into his story. On the face of it, the story has nothing to do with Bjork. But in the larger scheme, I think it has everything to do with his plight.

Yon's account is an unintentional backgrounder on Bjork's case.

Erica Manning said on the Facebook Group page there’s nothing new to report about Capt. Bjork at present. “We are waiting for a trial date. Even though it is SUPPOSED to go to trial by March 1, it looks more like April.”