Greene County Airman's Killer Sentenced to Life

Back to HomePage
Updated: 7:33 PM Feb 10, 2012 Greene County Airman's Killer Sentenced to Life Newsplex/AP An Islamic extremist who killed two U.S. airmen bound for Afghanistan at Frankfurt airport last year and injured two others was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison on Friday. Posted: 12:00 PM Feb 10, 2012 Email Address: news@newsplex.com

Font Size:

February 10, 2012

An Islamic extremist who killed two U.S. airmen bound for Afghanistan at Frankfurt airport last year and injured two others was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison on Friday.

The state court in Frankfurt convicted 22-year-old Arid Uka of two counts of murder. It also found him guilty of three counts of attempted murder and serious bodily harm for wounding two other servicemen and taking aim at a third before his 9 mm pistol jammed.

Uka, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, killed Airman 1st Class Zachary R. Cuddeback, 21, from Greene County and Senior Airman Nicholas J. Alden, 25, from South Carolina, in the March 2 attack on the Afghanistan-bound servicemen as they were boarding a bus at the airport.

"I believe the judges did what they could to keep Arid Uka in jail for as long as they can under German law," said Zachary Cuddeback's father, Bob.

Judge Thomas Sagebiel ruled that Uka bears "particularly severe guilt," citing the nature of his ambush on the soldiers, the fact he shot unarmed people from behind and the severity of the injuries he inflicted. That means he won't immediately be eligible for parole after 15 years as is usual in Germany.

Uka smiled and chatted with his lawyers before and after the sentence was announced, then sat with his eyes closed and his head downturned as the judge detailed his reasoning.

"I do not believe he bears any guilt for this, for his acts. He's been joking around in the courtroom and I just don't believe it," Bob Cuddeback said in a phone interview with CBS19 Friday afternoon.

Cuddeback says the sentencing doesn't provide closure for him or his family, but he will continue to move forward for his son. "It will never bring Zachary back," he said. "It's going to be very difficult moving forward but we'll have to for Zac's sake."

Prosecutors said Uka was an example of a lone-wolf extremist who became radicalized on his own by reading and watching jihadist propaganda on the Internet. During the trial, they introduced as evidence dozens of files containing songs and written material pulled from his cell phone, music player and computer.

While charged with two murders and three attempted murders, Uka could still be eligible for parole in 15-20 years. Bob Cuddeback says it's not enough, and he still has one question for the man who killed his son.

"I would ask him why," he said. "He hasn't explained it in any good terms."

Uka, who worked as a temporary mail sorter at the airport, testified that he wanted to stop U.S. service personnel from going to Afghanistan after viewing a video on Facebook that purported to show American soldiers raping a teenage Muslim girl. It turned out to be a scene from the 2007 Brian De Palma anti-war film "Redacted," taken out of context.

Although Germany has experienced scores of terrorist attacks in past decades, largely from leftist groups like the Red Army Faction, the airport attack was the first attributed to an Islamic extremist.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, there have been about a half-dozen other jihadist plots that were either thwarted or failed - including a 2007 plan to kill Americans at the U.S. Air Force's Ramstein Air Base.

The airmen at Frankfurt airport were part of a security team traveling from an air base at Lakenheath in Britain.

As they loaded their bus in front of the airport, Uka approached the soldiers and asked for a cigarette, then asked if the group was headed for Afghanistan. Told that it was, Uka pulled a pistol from his backpack and shot the unarmed Alden point blank in the back of the head.

He then boarded the bus and fatally shot Cuddeback, the driver, before turning the gun on two more airmen, Staff Sgt. Kristoffer Schneider and Edgar Veguilla. The weapon jammed as he pointed it at Staff Sgt. Trevor Brewer, who testified that Uka had "hate in his eyes" and said "Allahu akbar" - Arabic for "God is great."

Click here to post a comment.

Live News	Weather Now	Desktop Alert
Mobile	iPhone App	Text Alerts
Facebook	Twitter	YouTube