Lawyers Thought Video Games Could Help Explain Why Man Murdered Soldiers


On March 2, 2011, 21-year-old Arid Uka walked up to one US soldier outside the airport in Frankfurt Germany and shot him in the head. Witnesses said he boarded a US military bus, shot a second soldier to death and injured two more.

Uka has already confessed to the shootings, and prosecutors are seeking a life sentence. His lawyer’s defence as Uka’s trial was wrapping up earlier this week?

They were going to pin some of the blame on video games, according to the US military’s newspaper Stars and Stripes:

Defense lawyers will highlight Uka’s youth and immaturity and what they say was the effect on Uka of Internet propaganda coupled with violent computer games he played.

“With the games, how easy it is to kill somebody,” Uka’s lawyer, Jens Joerg Hoffmann, said. “You just push the reset button.”

Uka, a native of Kosovo, had been angered by what he thought was an online video depicting American soldiers raping an Iraqi girl. It turned out to just be a clip from a Hollywood movie.

It’s not clear how hard Uka’s lawyers really tried to use this video game defence during closing arguments on Monday, as follow-up reports focused on defence lawyer Michaela Roth explaining his client’s own childhood trauma and naivete:

“He’s not a man. He’s a boy who spent his time playing computer games,” said defence attorney Michaela Roth.

Roth said that the shootings were not religiously motivated but had happened because Uka wanted to protect helpless Afghan victims from being raped by American soldiers. Roth said Uka, who had been sexually molested with he was 6 years old by a man, had been in part driven to the shootings after watching a clip of the movie “Redacted” showing the rape by U.S. soldiers of an Iraqi girl and the murders of her and her family.

Uka will be sentenced by the German court on January 19.

Prosecutor: Uka turned bus into ‘deadly tunnel’ [Stars and Stripes]

Top: Mario Vedder/AP

The Cheapest NBN 1000 Plans

Looking to bump up your internet connection and save a few bucks? Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Kotaku, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


5 responses to “Lawyers Thought Video Games Could Help Explain Why Man Murdered Soldiers”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *