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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

Suicide or Murder? Three Years After the Death of Pfc. LaVena Johnson in Iraq, Her Parents Continue Their Call for a Congressional Investigation

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/...icide_or_murder_three_years_after

Excerpt:

Army Private First Class LaVena Johnson would have turned twenty-three this month, but three years ago the African American teenager from Missouri was found dead in Balad, Iraq, just a few weeks short of her twentieth birthday.

Her body was found in a tent belonging to the private military contractor Kellogg Brown & Root. She had abrasions all over her body, a broken nose, a black eye, burned hands, loose teeth, acid burns on her genitals, a bullet hole in her head. The Army labeled LaVena Johnson’s death a suicide. They told her parents she died of “self-inflicted, non-combat injuries.”

But her parents never believed that story. They think she was raped and murdered and that the Army’s investigators ignored physical evidence that would have proved this. The Johnsons are now demanding a full congressional investigation into their daughter’s death.