Second Spanish woman promoted to General

 A military lawyer, Begoña Aramendía, age 55, is the second woman to ascend to the rank of General in the Spanish Armed Forces.  The first woman to reach this rank was Patricia Ortega García, who was promoted to General in 2019.  Aramendía was born in Morocco in 1965, got her law degree in 1988 at the University of Zaragoza and entered the department of Military Law in 1989, the first group that admitted women.  She has occupied various positions as legal adviser in different units of the Defense Department and has served overseas in four military operations: Kosovo (2000), Afghanistan (2003), Bosnia-Herzegovina (2006) and Lebanon (2008).  The Spanish Armed Forces is 12.9% female, which is more than the NATO average of 10.9%.  Countries that have a greater percentage of females in the Armed Forces than Spain are: Hungary (20%), Slovenia (16.1%), Latvia (16%), the US (15.9%), Canada and Bulgaria (15.1% each), France (15%) and Albania (14%) as of 2019 data.

Larrabee oral argument

The retiree-jurisdiction case, Larrabee v. Harker, No. 21-5012, will be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday, Oct. 22, 2021.

Tough luck for petitioners

Once again, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces is apparently going to sit with four judges, rather than filling itself out with a senior judge, when ruling on petitions for grant of review. The Court's unfortunate August 2, 2021 Order can be found here. 

Good luck, petitioners: you now need 50% of the judges to grant review; until July 31, all you needed was 40%. And of course, without a grant of review, the path to the Supreme Court remains barred under current law.

This unfair state of affairs will presumably continue until the President nominates someone to succeed Chief (now Senior) Judge Scott W. Stucky and that person is confirmed by the Senate. Any guesses as to how long that will take?

USS Bonhomme Richard

Alleged to be arson.

John Ismay, Court Documents Identify Sailor Charged With Arson in Fire That Destroyed Ship. New York Times, August 4, 2021.

Investigators have identified the Navy sailor accused of starting a fire that engulfed the warship Bonhomme Richard and burned for days at a Navy base in San Diego last year.

The sailor, RSM, 20, joined the service in May 2019 and holds the rank of seaman apprentice, according to Navy records. The Navy formally charged Seaman Mays with aggravated arson and hazarding a vessel last month but declined to provide additional details until federal search warrants were unsealed by a federal court in San Diego on Tuesday.

Documents filed by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service describe a sailor who “hated” the Navy after being sent to a warship following a brief stint as a SEAL trainee in late 2019.

Seaman RSM quit the difficult six-month initial SEAL training course in Coronado, Calif., after just five days, according to the filing.

. . . 

The fire, one of the worst to engulf an American warship outside combat, rendered the ship inoperative while it was pierside at the base. More than 400 sailors from 16 nearby ships fought the blaze, which reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees and took four days to extinguish.

. . .

 

About 160 sailors were aboard the ship at the time, according to the Navy, which said that 34 sailors and 23 civilians were injured. The injuries were not life-threatening, and included heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation. All crew members had been accounted for, the Navy said, and five sailors remained hospitalized in stable condition.

RSM was released after several months in pretrial confinement. It appears he was identified as a suspect almost a year ago.

It is too early to tell, but for the moment, the evidence seems to be some statements he made to others, some opinions of some of his leaders and shipmates, and him having access and being close to the scene of the fire near the time of the fire. It appears the investigators are focused on several containers found which contained liquid (usually available aboard ship) as accelerants.

Some more here, here.

191

Big news from the glass-enclosed newsroom high above Global Military Justice Reform Plaza: we have just had our first hit from . . . Greenland. This makes readership in 191 jurisdictions. 

Another landmark will occur in a few days, so we'll defer running all the numbers until then.