A US soldier convicted of the 2006 murder of a former Iraqi police officer went home yesterday after a military jury commuted his 11-year sentence to time served.

Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins had served seven years but the military jury at Camp Pendleton in California cut the sentence and recommended that Sgt Hutchins be given a bad-conduct discharge.

After the killing in Iraq came to light, then-US navy secretary Ray Mabus called it “cold-blooded murder.”

Hutchins led a squad of soldiers sent to combat sniper attacks and the planting of improvised explosive devices.

But on April 26 2006 he led his squad in abducting retired policeman Hashim Ibrahim Awad.

They killed him and placed an AK-47 and a shovel next to his body to suggest he had been planting a bomb.

The seven other squad members were convicted at courts-martial but none were imprisoned for more than 18 months.