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Washington: A US army translator has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for adopting a false identity to obtain US nationality and procuring classified military documents about the Iraq war, justice officials said.
The man, who was employed in by private contracting firm L-3 Titan Corp as a US army translator in Iraq in August 2003, used his false identity to gain "secret" and then "top secret" security clearance to access secret military documents without authorisation during his time in Iraq, the Justice Department said.
After a US government investigation headed by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, the man pleaded guilty to “unauthorised possession of classified documents” and harbouring a “false identity,” and received a sentence of 121 months prison time.
"While assigned to an intelligence group in the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army at Al-Taqqadam Air Base, he downloaded a classified document and took hard copies of several other classified documents," the department said.
The documents detailed sensitive information concerning the mission in Iraq, including coordinates of insurgent locations.
He also allegedly took pictures of a "classified battle map identifying US troop routes used in August 2004 during the bloody battle of Najaf, where the US and Iraqi security forces sustained serious casualties."
He will also lose his US citizenship.
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