WWW . THESKANNER . COM
M ARCH 14, 2012
S EATTLE , W ASHINGTON
V OLUME XXXIV, N O . 11
25
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C HALLENGING P EOPLE TO S HAPE A B ETTER F UTURE N OW
Seattle
Soldier
Atrocity
ONE
YEAR
LATER
Afghan shooter was
on fourth deployment
to war zone
By Gene Johnson
The Associated Press
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
The Reverend Yuren Tai from the Seattle
Koyasan Buddhist Temple shields the
flame of a candle from the wind before
the start of a community gathering
commemorating the first anniversary of
the Japanese earthquake and
tsunami. About 200 people attended
the event Sunday March 11th at the
Kobe Bell at Seattle Center. At 2:46
p.m., the time of last year’s
earthquake, a minute of silence was
observed, followed by the ringing of
the Kobe bell by the dignitaries in
attendance and members of the
public.
Worries About Radioactive Waste
Tsunami debris floating across Pacific slowly approaches U.S. shores
By Audrey McAvoy
The Associated Press
HONOLULU
(AP)
—
Refrigerators, TVs and other
debris dragged into sea when a
massive earthquake hit Japan
last March, causing tsunamis as
high as 130 feet to crash ashore,
could show up in remote atolls
north of Hawaii as soon as this
winter, with other pieces reach-
ing parts of the West Coast in
2013 and 2014, experts say.
Debris from the tsunami ini-
tially formed a thick mass in the
ocean of Japan’s northeastern
coast. But ocean currents have
dispersed the pieces so they’re
now estimated to spread out
some 3,000 miles halfway
across the Pacific.
The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
said Tuesday the first bits of
tsunami debris are estimated to
make landfall this winter on
small atolls northwest of the
main Hawaiian Islands. Other
pieces are expected to reach the
coasts of Oregon, Washington
state, Alaska and Canada
INDEX
News ........................2,4
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between March 2013 and March
2014.
NOAA’s tsunami marine
debris coordinator, Ruth Yender,
told an online news conference
that agency workers were
boarding Coast Guard flights
that patrol the archipelago.
NOAA also asked scientists sta-
tioned at Midway and other
atolls to look for the debris.
In September, a Russian train-
ing ship spotted a refrigerator, a
television set and other appli-
ances west of Hawaii. By now,
the debris has likely drifted so
far apart that only one object
can be seen at a time, said Niko-
lai Maximenko, a University of
Hawaii researcher and ocean
currents expert.
Most items likely sank not far
from Japan’s eastern coast.
One million to 2 million tons
of debris remain in the ocean,
but only 1 to 5 percent of that
could reach American and
Canadian shorelines, Maxi-
menko said. The tsunamis that
followed the magnitude-9 earth-
quake generated 20 million to
See TSUNAMI on page 4
SEATTLE (AP) — A U.S. soldier sus-
pected of killing at least 16 Afghan civilians
in a nighttime assault is from a brigade that
was the first in the Army to use the Stryker,
a nimble eight-wheeled, light infantry vehi-
cle built for a post-Cold War era.
Now, the brigade and the Washington state
base where it is located are grappling with
one of its own being accused of one of the
worst atrocities of the roughly decade-old
war in Afghanistan.
The name of the 38-year-old soldier was
not released because it would be “inappro-
priate” to do so before charges are filed,
Pentagon spokesman George Little said.
The soldier is in custody at a base in Kan-
dahar.
The staff sergeant was deployed Dec. 3
with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regi-
ment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd
Infantry Division, based at Joint Base
Lewis-McChord located south of Seattle, a
congressional source told The Associated
Press.
The person spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the
matter.
The soldier, who has been in the military
for 11 years, served three tours in Iraq and is
married with two children, was being held
in pretrial confinement in Kandahar while
Army officials review his complete deploy-
ment and medical history, Pentagon officials
said.
A U.S. official who spoke on condition of
anonymity because the matter is under
investigation said that during a recent tour
of duty in Iraq, the suspect was involved in
a vehicle accident and suffered a head
injury, although information about the
extent of the injury wasn’t available. The
accident was not combat-related, and there
was no available indication that his injury
could be linked to abnormal behavior after-
See SOLDIER on page 2
Sentence Struck Down in Bomb Plot
Ahmed Ressam’s case is sent back to NW for harsher sentencing
By Robert Jablon
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A terrorist who
plotted to blow up Los Angeles Internation-
al Airport on the eve of the millennium, now
halfway through his 22-year sentence, will
have to serve longer after an appeals court
ruled Monday that the original punishment
did not fit a crime that a judge said could
have rivaled Sept. 11.
In a 7-4 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the gov-
ernment’s appeal and sent the case back to a
federal judge in Seattle for resentencing for
a third time.
The court, which contains some of the
nation’s most liberal judges, said Ahmed
Ressam’s plot to blow up the airport on New
Year’s Eve 1999, was “horrific” and intend-
ed to intimidate the nation and the world.
“Had Ressam succeeded, ‘LAX’ may well
have entered our vocabulary as a term anal-
ogous to `the Oklahoma City bombing’ or
`9/11,’” Judge Richard R. Clifton wrote for
the majority. “His clear intent was to intim-
idate this nation and the world, and he
sought to influence world events and the
See TERRORIST on page 2