A/HRC/4/20 page 9 4. Determining compliance 27. The position put forward by the United States would give every State the power unilaterally, and without external scrutiny, to determine whether or not a specific incident is covered by the mandate of the Special Rapporteur. The implication is that the Special Rapporteur should automatically accept a State’s own determination that a particular individual was an “enemy combatant” attacked in “appropriate circumstances”. On this basis, a Government can target and kill any individual who it deems to be an enemy combatant, and it would not be accountable in that regard to the international community, let alone to the Council. 28. In effect, this position would place all actions taken in the so-called “global war on terror” in a public accountability void, in which no international monitoring body would exercise public oversight.30 Creating such a vacuum would set back the development of the international human rights regime by several decades. In order to avoid such an unacceptable outcome, the Special Rapporteur would need to receive a detailed explanation of such incidents, so that he may determine independently whether they fall within the scope of the mandate provided by the Council. B. “Mercy killings” in armed conflict 29. The expression “mercy killings” has recently been used to characterize certain killings by the military in the context of armed conflicts. One example concerns the court martial of Capt. Rogelio Maynulet for the shooting of an Iraqi man in Baghdad in May 2004. A “mercy killing” argument was central to the defence.31 Although originally charged with murder for shooting twice at point-blank range,32 Maynulet was ultimately convicted of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to dismissal from the army and no confinement.33 Another example, also from Iraq, is the invocation of a mercy killing defence for two soldiers who mistakenly opened fire on what appears to have been a group of non-combatant teenagers. Realizing their mistake, medics hurried to treat the injured, when, according to reports, “[a] dispute broke out among a handful of soldiers standing over one severely wounded young man who was moaning in pain. An unwounded Iraqi claiming to be a relative of the victim pleaded in broken English for soldiers to help him. But to the horror of bystanders, Alban, 29, a boyish-faced sergeant who joined the Army in 1997, retrieved an M-231 assault rifle and fired into the wounded man’s body. Seconds later, another soldier, Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne, Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, NC, grabbed an M-16 rifle and also shot the victim”.34 30. On this basis United States officials characterized the shooting as a “mercy killing”, citing statements by Alban and Horne that they had shot the wounded Iraqi “to put him out of his misery”.35 Subsequently, other soldiers present at the scene expressed surprise that the victims were not rushed to hospital.36 In January 2005, Alban was convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder after a one-day court martial in Baghdad. He was sentenced to one year’s confinement, demotion to private and a bad-conduct discharge.37