Life Sentence For U.S. Soldier

A U.S. soldier who admitted killing an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl while on peacekeeping duty in Kosovo has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A panel of officers at the U.S. military court in Wuerzburg, Germany, handed down the maximum sentence to Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, 36, of Niles, Ohio. Ronghi Friday entered a guilty plea to charges of murder, forcible sodomy and indecent acts in the death of Merita Shabiu last January.

Ronghi sat impassively as the verdict was read. Earlier Tuesday, in his first public statement since being arrested six months ago, he apologized to the girl's family, saying "I don't know what went wrong that day."

"I apologize from the bottom of my heart to the family. I ask them for my forgiveness," he told the court. Reading from a piece of paper and showing no emotion, he added apologies to the Army, his unit and his family "for all the hurt I have caused."

Halim Shabiu, the 19-year-old brother of the victim, says the apology "means nothing. She's gone. Nothing can bring her back."

Shabiu also commented on the life sentence, saying Ronghi "should be burned to death, so he can see hell with his own eyes."

Halim says the family, which now has five members, should receive financial compensation for its loss.

The family ekes out a living by raising chickens and growing peppers, corn and other crops, along the side of a mountain along the Macedonian border.

Shabiu, a woodcutter, harbors no ill will towards Americans as a group. "We only have a problem with Ronghi, not with other Americans. I think not all Americas are bad."

Bejtush Shabiu, an uncle of the victim, says Ronghi "deserves the worst, including execution." He says American peacekeepers regularly visit his shop and have spoken to him about his niece's murder. "They shrug their shoulders," he says, "We've said it before, we'll say it again: not all Americans are bad."

The family Tuesday laid flowers on the young girl's grave in Vitina, her home village in Kosovo.

In the streets of Pristinia, other ethnic Albanians reacted to the verdict. "It was the right decision," said one mother. "The soldier was guilty and we pray for his family."

Another ethnic Albanian asked about the verdict says "We cannot blame Americans, it is just one soldier that is guilty. We have to work with Americans. But the sentence is fair."

Ronghi did not try to excuse his actions, but he told the court he had always tried to be a decent person.

"I never did anything wrong before," he said. "I know what I did was very wrong. That's why I pleaded guilty."

The six-officer panel deliberated for less than an hour before returning the verdict. In addition to the prison sentence, the panel handed Ronghi a reduction in rank, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and a dishonorable discharge.

AP Photo Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, in a family photo taken before the trial.

"Your job is to protect society,"Gwaltney said in his closing arguments to a jury panel of six Army officers.

Ronghi told fellow platoon members he planned to "grab a little girl and rape her, but he would have to kill her to get away with it and blame the Serbs," said Gwaltney, citing earlier testimony by a fellow soldier.

Ronghi, a well-built man with short dark hair, said he regretted what he had done and the disgrace he had brought on the U.S. Army.

The slain girl's parents and two of her siblings, Kirnete and Sami, traveled from Kosovo to testify in the case. Earlier Tuesday, the parents told the court about how they fled from Serb persecution in the province - and how relieved they felt at being able to return home under the protection of NATO forces.

None of the family's six children felt more reassured by the international presence than 11-year-old Merita, according to her father, Hamdi Shabiu.

"She was very happy because she thought they had come to protect us," he said.

In the months before NATO's war to force Serbs out of Kosovo, the Shabiu family's experience was typical of the harassment ethnic Albanians suffered as the Serbs intensified their campaign against the ethnic Albanian majority in the province.

The family decided to join tens of thousands of others who fled to Macedonia, some 25 miles away. They returned to Kosovo after NATO's air campaign was halted on June 15.

"She survived only to meet her death at the hands of the man who should have protected her," the chief prosecutor, Maj. Alten Gawaltney, told the court.

Merita was home alone with Kirnete, her 14-year-old sister, and Sami, her 9-year-old brother, on the morning of Jan. 13 when Ronghi came knocking at their apartment door, Gawaltney told the court. Prosecutors said Ronghi had gone to the building to find a 23-year-old woman with whom he had been flirting.

Prosecutors described how the girls grew uncomfortable at Ronghi's presence in their apartment, and they left him alone with their brother. But as Ronghi was leaving the building, he encountered Merita, who was persuaded to go with him to the basement.

"She followed him into the basement because she trusted him," Gawaltney said.

The prosecution described the sexual assault, and said Ronghi killed her to stop her screaming. "The process lasted about two minutes," Gawaltney said.

According to prosecutors, Ronghi then put the girl's body in to U.N. food sacks, hid it under the stairs, covered bloodstains on the floor with flour and returned to his platoon. He allegedly returned later, ignoring radio requests to respond to a situation elsewhere in town while he retrieved the body and buried it beneath the snow on a nearby hill top. A private who accompanied Ronghi reported the incident to superiors.

Merita's mother, Remzije, described how their daughter's death has destroyed the family. She said she was having trouble sleeping, and that Merita's younger brother, Sami, has refused to go to school since her death.

"Not only Merita died. We all died," she said.

The parents said they did not blame the U.S. military. "The whole army did not do this to me," Hamdi Shabiu said. "This was Ronghi's fault."

While their parents testified, Kirnete and Sami sat in the back of the courtroom with a translator and a military escort. Sami drew in a notebook at times during the morning.

The defense described Ronghi "as an ordinary person" who encountered a culture of excessive violence and abuse of power during duty in Kosovo.

"He stumbled hard. He'll be the first to tell you that," Capt. Kerry Suneo said in opening remarks.

Ronghi has been confined in Wuerzburg, 60 miles east of Frankfurt. U.S. military personnel convicted of murder normally serve their sentences in the military's high-security prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

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