Tracy E. Perkins (?1971) is a Sergeant First Class (reduced in rank by court martial to Staff Sergeant) in the U.S. Army. On 3 January 2004, he forced, at gunpoint, civilian plumbers Zaidoun Hassoun and Marwan Fadel to leap from a road bridge in Samarra, Iraq, into the waters of the River Tigris below. The cousins Hassoun and Fadel had been caught by a U.S. checkpoint after curfew. Fadel managed to reach the riverbank, but claims that he saw Hassoun drown and that the family later retrieved and buried the body. The battalion commander of the four soldiers, Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman, was reprimanded this year for impeding investigators. [1] On 8 January 2005, a military court in Fort Hood, Texas, U.S., acquitted Perkins of manslaughter but convicted him of aggravated assault and obstruction of justice. He received a prison term of six months and a reduction in rank.
