Jury selection began on Monday in the trial of a former US soldier being tried as a civilian on charges of raping a teenage girl and killing her and her family in Iraq.
Steven Dale Green, 22, will be the first former Army soldier to be charged as a civilian under a law that allows him to be prosecuted for alleged crimes committed overseas.
He is accused along with four fellow soldiers of raping a 14-year-old girl and killing her and her family in Mahmoudiya, Iraq.
Rather than facing an Iraqi or military jury, Green will face jurors in a federal court in Paducah in the US state of Kentucky, more than 6,700 miles (10,800 kilometres) away from Iraq, under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act.
Local Iraqi politician Jabir al-Hamdani called on Monday for the death sentence to be imposed if Green was convicted.
Congress passed the law in 2000 to allow US authorities to prosecute former military personnel for crimes committed overseas.
The law specifically cites a "jurisdictional gap" that leaves perpetrators unpunished for crimes by Americans occurring in countries that won't prosecute them or that the US is unable to investigate or prosecute. It also covers civilians, their spouses and military contractors.
Green and four other soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, were investigated after an Iraqi girl, Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, was raped and her body set afire.
Her family was also killed on March 12, 2006.
By the time the Army pressed charges in June 2006, Green had been honourably discharged with a personality disorder and returned to the United States.
The other four soldiers were charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and each faced a military trial, known as a court martial.
Three pleaded guilty and a jury convicted one. They received sentences ranging from five years to 110 based on their acknowledged roles in the attack.
APTN