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Commission: Punish troops who abandon pets

Airmen who adopt pets when stationed overseas and then abandon those animals when they move should face criminal charges, according to a commission on military justice.

“Because this abuse and abandonment often takes place overseas and is beyond the reach of local civilian authorities, service members can go unpunished for this conduct,” the commission said.

The Commission on Military Justice, created in 2001 to assess the military justice system’s laws and practices, received dozens of letters and e-mails about the issue of animal abuse from people in Italy, England, Germany and the U.S.

“Most of us were not aware that this was the problem that it is,” said Walter Cox, a retired judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and the chairman of the commission.

“Of all the issues, I would not have predicted that this would be the issue we would get the most mail on,” Cox said.

One letter, for example, reported that Italian authorities in Aviano found a dead 1-year-old boxer who died a “slow, agonizing” death from dehydration after an airman from nearby Aviano Air Base apparently left the dog locked in his apartment when leaving his post. The case was publicized in the local Italian press.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice punishes abuse of a “public animal” under Article 134, known as the general article. But currently there are no laws addressing treatment of pets, which are legally considered “non-public animals.”

“Currently there is not an adequate mechanism for holding these service members criminally accountable when they abuse or abandon these non-public animals,” the commission said in its report, released Oct. 19.

There is also “a very direct and important correlation between mistreatment of animals and domestic abuse, child abuse and other forms of violence,” said Elizabeth Hillman, a former Air Force captain who is now a University of California law professor. She helped write the commission’s report.

The commission sent a letter to the Defense Department urging military officials to close the “loophole” regarding animal abuse and abandonment. A Pentagon spokesman did not return calls for comment about the recommendation.

Eugene Fidell, the president and director of the National Institute of Military Justice, was also surprised the commission heard so many comments about animal abuse and abandonment.

“This may be one of the emerging issues,” Fidell said.

Surprised by number of cases

The Commission on Military Justice received dozens of letters and e-mails about animal abuse and abandonment from people urging a new military law making it a crime.

* Several animal rights activists contacted the commission about a 2006 court case in England involving Dustin Yandell, 21, a senior airman with the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath. Yandell was convicted of slitting his wife’s labrador retriever’s throat and dumping the dog’s body in a recycling bin near his home. He received 18 weeks in jail.

* Italian authorities told the commission about the discovery by local police of the decomposing body of a 1-year-old boxer locked in the apartment of a departed airman.

* English authorities told the commission that at least 33 dogs were abandoned by U.S. service members at or near RAF Lakenheath between 2002 and 2005.

* An American woman living near Ramstein Air Base in Germany told the commission that several dogs and cats were recently found dead from starvation in a locked apartment at Sembach Air Base.