Kosovo parents testify at trial of US soldier

Ronghi, a 36-year-old native of Niles, Ohio, could face a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The chief suspense in the sentencing is over whether he will be offered the chance of eventual parole.

Wiping away tears, the girl’s father, Hamdi Shabiu, told the court how, like many other ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, his daughter had welcomed the NATO-led KFOR (Kosovo Force) peacekeepers when they arrived in the province.

"She was very happy because she thought they had come to protect us. How do you do this to someone? He massacred my daughter," Shabiu told the court.

The couple, who have five other children, wept as the details of the sodomy and murder were read out to the court.

"Marita is not the only one that died. We all died. We are half-people now," said the girl’s mother, Remzije Shabiu.

A Weapons Squad leader in the 3rd Battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Ronghi has also pleaded guilty to indecent acts with a child.

He was arrested in the Yugoslav province after the bruised and lacerated body of Marita Shabiu was found in woodland outside the town of Vitina on January 13.

Ronghi, a well-built man with short dark hair, had remained calm at the hearing on Friday when he pleaded guilty. At a pre-trial hearing in February, a sergeant told of how a young Private under his command alleged that Ronghi had taken him in a Humvee military vehicle to an apartment block, loaded up the vehicle out of his sight and then driven out of town, where they had dumped the girl’s body.

Ronghi, sent to Kosovo from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, has been held in confinement by the US army in Mannheim, Germany.

The Army said last month that if found guilty, Ronghi would serve his term at a federal prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The trial would have had to be held in the United States if the army had decided to push for the death penalty to punish the first serious crime implicating one of the KFOR peacekeepers in the Yugoslav province.