Sergeants on Trial (Contd.)

Whenever a member of a force . . . is prosecuted under the jurisdiction of a receiving State he shall be entitled to a prompt and speedy trial [and ] to be confronted with the witnesses against him. --NATO Status of Forces Agreement

Last week, nearly two months after their arrest on charges of currency black-marketing (TIME, Aug. 24 et seq.), four U.S. sergeants stationed at NATO's southeastern headquarters in Turkey had their fourth brief hearing in an Izmir court. For the third straight session the prosecution failed to produce its chief witnesses against them. With a show of bland indifference, the presiding judge adjourned the trial for another nine days.

Whose Memory? Later that day, at the separate trial of three Turkish cops charged with beating Sergeants Dale McCuistion and James King in an attempt to extract confessions from them, the Americans fared no better. The accused cops produced a parade of witnesses who claimed to have been present at the questioning of McCuistion and King and to have seen no signs of brutality. But when Sergeant McCuistion asked the judge to question one of the witnesses more closely on timing, the judge coolly remarked: "Well, who would think of marking down the date anyway." Nor did the court make any attempt to call another of the arrested Americans, Staff Sergeant Joseph Proietti, who did not claim to have been beaten himself but who last week wrote to his brother in New York:

"I was there when they took [King] into the stables (where they previously beat two Turks) and I could hear him screaming . . . When he came out his feet were so swollen that he couldn't get [them] in his shoes and could just about walk. His handkerchief was bloody and he was crying . . . McCuistion was beaten in the morning. I saw him about six . . . They then separated us and I didn't see him any more until 1100 hours. His shirt was torn, no glasses on, blood and scratches on his face and red bruises all over his body. He was also crying and saying: 'They're going to kill me.' "

Whose Opinion? The U.S. State Department's reaction to all this was pithily summed up in a letter written by Deputy Under Secretary of State Loy Henderson in answer to a request for information on the case from Michigan's Congressman Alvin Bentley. Wrote Henderson: "I would like to state categorically that our officers in the embassy in Ankara and the consulate in Izmir were deeply concerned about this case from the beginning and that they acted properly and with good judgment to safeguard the rights of the accused. In my opinion, [they] have lived up to the best traditions of the Foreign Service."

This was not the opinion of Sergeant Proietti. Wrote he: "Did you know that since our apprehension until now, the Turkish police broke the [NATO Status of Forces Agreement] on 7 different occasions, excluding the beatings. What makes me sick is that our government is accepting it without an argument."

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