An AWOL Cleveland soldier may become the first to test German and international laws that could grant asylum to deserters.
Spc. Andre Shepherd, 31, had served in Iraq as an Apache helicopter mechanic, and was based in Germany when he went absent without leave a year and a half ago.
On the Military Counseling Network's Web site, he called the war in Iraq "illegal," "internationally condemned" and "shown to be founded on a series of lies."
Shepherd said in a telephone interview Monday that he originally wanted to settle in Germany, where he had been living underground since deserting, but found that he would not be allowed without proof of his discharge from the Army.
Tim Huber, of the Military Counseling Network near Heidelberg, Germany, said Shepherd first came to the group to resolve his AWOL status, and they advised him to turn himself in.
Shepherd asked about other options, and Huber said there was asylum, but that it had never been successfully pursued by a deserter.
One compo nent of the Ger man law comes out of the Nu remberg war- crimes trials at the end of World War II, said Mi chael Scharf, professor of international law at Case Western Reserve University. Essentially, the issue is that someone is not allowed to obey an unlawful order.
Huber said that a German court found the war in Iraq to be unlawful in 2005 when it reversed the demotion of a German army officer who had refused to work on a computer program that he feared could be used in Iraq.
Huber said that according to Shepherd's German lawyer, he could seek asylum under international Geneva Conventions, which the lawyer said would supercede any NATO treaties or agreements with Germany.
Shepherd said he grew up on East 94th Street in Cleveland, attended Lakewood High School and studied computer science at Kent State University until he ran out of money.
He enlisted in 2004 with the hope of flying the Apaches, but was urged to become a mechanic first.
Scharf doubts that Shepherd's expected order to return to Iraq would, by itself, constitute an unlawful order.
"His best argument would be that Apaches are used to kill civilians," Scharf said, but he still viewed it as a weak case.
The professor said a similar case occurred in Canada last month, and Canadian authorities did not accept the argument that Shepherd is using. Canada handed that other soldier over to the United States.
Scharf also wondered about Germany's willingness to become a haven for any U.S. soldier who did not want to go to Iraq.
Scharf was on the team of international legal experts that trained the judges of the Iraqi High Tribunal, which ultimately tried Saddam Hussein and ordered his execution.
Huber estimated that about 60,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Germany.
Brian Shepherd, the soldier's oldest brother, who still lives here, said Monday that his family was surprised to hear of last week's asylum request because his brother joined up after 9/11, and seemed to enjoy the Army. They last spoke to him last Christmas, and he gave no indication that he was AWOL.
"We really don't know the whole gist of things," said Brian Shepherd. "My brother doesn't do anything rashly. He's very, very thoughtful.
"I support him because, you know, that's what brothers are supposed to do."
Army Spc. Andre Shepherd said he deserted from his unit's Katterbach base in April 2007 after returning from a six-month deployment in Iraq, where he was a mechanic working on Apache attack helicopters in Tikrit.
"We went to war basically for nothing," Shepherd, of Cleveland, Ohio, told The Associated Press. "There's no way I would go back for a second tour with the information that I have since received."
Shepherd has been staying with friends in southern Germany since going AWOL and working odd jobs to support himself.
Germany should grant him asylum, Shepherd said, because of its strong opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
"The Germany government already declared the war illegal in 2005," Shepherd said.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees migration and asylum, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Shepherd applied for asylum last week, said Tim Huber, director of the Germany-based Military Counseling Network, a group that has been assisting him.
U.S. Army Europe spokesman Bruce Anderson confirmed that Shepherd served in the Army's 12th combat aviation brigade but would not comment on the asylum application.
Shepherd's bid for asylum follows that of U.S. Army Spc. Jeremy Hinzman, who in September won a last-minute stay of deportation from Canada after a judge there ruled he could remain while awaiting a decision on whether he could appeal a deportation order.
Hinzman faces charges in the United States of fleeing to avoid duty in Iraq. He had served a tour in Afghanistan during his three years in the Army, but has argued that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal.
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