A female soldier pleaded guilty Monday to two counts of desertion
after fleeing to Canada to avoid a second tour of duty in the Iraq war.
Army
Pfc. Kimberly Rivera was sentenced to 10 months in prison and a
bad-conduct discharge after entering her plea at a court-martial.
Rivera,
30, was a wheeled-vehicle driver in Fort Carson’s 4th Infantry Brigade
Combat Team and served in Iraq in 2006. She has said that, while there,
she became disillusioned with the U.S. mission in Iraq.
During
a two-week leave in the U.S. in 2007, Rivera crossed the Canadian
border after she was ordered to serve another tour in Iraq.
The
Colorado Springs Gazette reported that when judge Col. Timothy Grammel
asked Rivera on Monday how long she remained absent, Rivera replied: “As
long as I possibly could, sir. … I intended to quit my job
permanently.”
After fleeing to Canada, Rivera applied for refugee status but was denied.
Rivera
then applied for permanent residency, but Canadian immigration
officials rejected that application, too. Authorities also rejected her
requests to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
Rivera
was first ordered to leave Canada or face deportation in 2009, but she
appealed that decision.
The mother of four faced another deportation
order issued in 2012.
She was arrested at the U.S. border and taken into military custody.
About
19,000 people signed an online petition in Canada protesting Rivera’s
deportation order, and rallies were held in a number of Canadian cities
calling on the government to let her stay in the country.
Nobel
Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the U.S. veterans
organization Veterans for Peace also protested the deportation order.
During
her sentencing hearing, government lawyers argued that Rivera, who was
granted leave shortly into her tour to work out marital issues, failed
to return because her husband threatened to leave her and take their
children, The Gazette reported.
Rivera’s
civilian defense attorney, James Matthew Branum, argued that Rivera
never filed for status as a conscientious objector because she didn’t
know the option was available to her. He said Rivera should have been
informed about it when she met with a chaplain in Iraq over concerns
that she couldn’t take a life, The Gazette reported.
In 2012, the War Resisters Support Campaign, a Canadian activist
group, estimated that there were about 200 Iraq war resisters in Canada.
It said two other Iraq war resisters who were deported, Robin Long and
Clifford Cornell, faced lengthy jail sentences upon their return.
Long
was given a dishonorable discharge in 2008 and sentenced to 15 months
in a military prison after pleading guilty to charges of desertion.
The
lower house of Canada’s Parliament most recently passed a motion in
2009 in favor of allowing U.S. military deserters to stay, but the
Conservative Party government was not persuaded.
During
the Vietnam War, as many as 90,000 Americans won refuge in Canada, most
of them to avoid the military draft. Many were given permanent
residence status that led to Canadian citizenship, but the majority went
home after President Carter granted amnesty in the late 1970s.
Some
Canadian politicians say the situation is different now because Iraq
war deserters like Rivera enlisted in the U.S. military voluntarily.
