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November 22nd,
2006 - Report: Five Marines May Face Charges in Haditha Killings News article by North County Times |
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Report: Five Marines May Face
Charges in Haditha Killings By: William Finn Bennett North County Times November 22, 2006 North County - Military
authorities may soon charge five Camp Pendleton Marines in the deaths of 24
Iraqi civilians in the city of Haditha just over one year ago, according to a
story Tuesday on National Public Radio that named the five men. The radio network reported
that prosecutors are weighing whether to file charges of negligent homicide
or murder against the men. The five are identified in the story as Sgt. Frank
Wuterich, who has since been promoted to the rank of staff sergeant, Cpls.
Hector Salinas, Sanick De la Cruz and Lance Cpls. Stephen Tatum and Justin
Sharratt. Marine Corps spokesman Lt.
Col. Sean Gibson said he could not confirm the radio report, which attributed
its information to unnamed Pentagon sources. "We are not making any
announcements," Gibson said from his office at Camp Pendleton. "No
decisions have been made." The Haditha case is
unrelated to charges that seven Camp Pendleton Marines and a Navy corpsman
conspired to and did kill a 52-year-old Iraqi civilian in April in the
village of Hamdania. That case is being prosecuted with four of the
defendants having accepted plea agreements and trials are looming for four
others. Wuterich is stationed at
Camp Pendleton, his attorney Mark Zaid said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
While Zaid said he couldn't say for sure where the other four men are, he
said Wuterich has told him that he frequently runs into several of the men on
the Marine base. Zaid added that none of the men is or has been in custody
nor have they been restricted to base. Eleven women and children
were among the two dozen Iraqis gunned down in Haditha in the Nov. 19, 2005,
incident. The killings sparked an international outcry when the case came to
light earlier this year, but no one has been charged. Iraqi witnesses have
contended that Marines from the 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon of Kilo Company
attached to Camp Pendleton's 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment went on a
rampage after one of their own was killed by a roadside bomb as the Marines
passed through the city. This summer, Wuterich made
statements defending himself and the other Marines, saying the deaths
occurred as the troops pursued what they believed to be enemy insurgents. Wuterich's attorney Zaid
said Tuesday that he was getting tired of unsubstantiated reports out of the
Defense Department that his client and other Marines are "about" to
be charged. "The cowardly anonymous
DOD sources have been saying for the last four months that charges were
imminent - so we have stopped trying to figure out when it is," Zaid
said. Tatum's attorney,
Houston-based Jack Zimmerman echoed those feelings. "People have been
predicting somebody was going to get charged in this case ever since last
summer - so eventually, someone is going to be right," Zimmerman said in
a phone interview late Tuesday. "Lance Cpl. Tatum did not commit any
crime." In August, Wuterich filed a
lawsuit against U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., after the congressman told
reporters in May that the Marines in the Haditha incident had "killed
innocent civilians in cold blood." Murtha is a retired Marine colonel. Wuterich reported that after
his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, a car full of
"military-aged" men approached in a taxi. When the men ran after
being ordered in Arabic to stop, the Marines shot and killed them, Wuterich
stated in the complaint against Murtha. In Tuesday's radio story,
however, the network reported that investigators took photos a short time
after the killings that showed all five bodies were next to the cab and no
evidence that "any of them ran." Zaid, who is representing
Wuterich in the lawsuit against Murtha, said that even though the photos may
show the bodies very close to the cab, that doesn't mean the men weren't
fleeing. "First of all, I don't
believe any rumors coming out of the Defense Department - I need to see the
physical evidence," Zaid said. "We have no idea if anybody moved
any of the bodies." Secondly, most people have a
"non-wartime" perception about what it means to say they started to
run, he said. The convoy had been attacked at the time the men showed up and
they failed to obey the order shouted in Arabic to get out of the car and on
the ground, he said. The Marines had no idea if
the men were armed, and under the rules of engagement, once the men failed to
obey orders and "started to run" - even if only a few feet from the
cab - they could be considered hostile. "I definitely think the
rules of engagement permitted them to have fired," Zaid said. Washington attorney Gary
Meyers, who represents Lance Cpl. Sharratt, said his client was not near the
cab at the time passengers were shot. He added he is not overly
concerned that charges may be filed. "If charges are
brought, charges are brought and we'll see what they are," Meyers said,
adding negligent homicide should not be one of the charges. "It's absurd to apply
civilian standards of 'due care' in a combat environment," Meyers said.
"Negligent homicide cannot be on the table in this setting." In Wuterich's lawsuit
against Murtha, the sergeant alleges that gunshots were heard from homes at
the side of the road and that the Marines then invaded three of the houses in
pursuit of what they believed were enemy combatants. In the third house, the
Marines saw a man running into the home, pursued him and killed him and three
others as they "attempted to fire their weapons," the lawsuit
complaint stated. National Public Radio
reported that Pentagon sources told its reporter that only one AK-47 rifle
was found in any of the houses. External link: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/11/22/news/top_stories/1_02_3111_21_06.txt Family
Stands By a Marine Under Investigation By Josh White Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, November 22, 2006; A03 Darryl
Sharratt often breaks into tears when trying to start sentences that include
the word "Haditha." A stoic foreman from Pennsylvania, he struggles
with painful concepts such as betrayal and helplessness. His wife, Theresa,
puts her hand on his shoulder and tries to talk through the anguish. "I
love my son. He's my hero," Theresa Sharratt says calmly. "He's not
what they're portraying him as. I can't believe that this is happening to us.
To him." Their
dining room table is covered with photographs, scrapbooks, letters and
trinkets belonging to their son, Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, a 22-year-old
Marine who had dreamed his entire life of joining the military. Now, the
Sharratts are fighting to preserve his reputation, as he is one of a handful
of Marines who are being investigated over the slayings of two dozen Iraqi
civilians on Nov. 19, 2005. The
Sharratts have remained silent until now because they did not know what to
say. They have avoided learning details of their son's possible involvement
in the shootings while they have struggled to understand what might have
happened in a war zone thousands of miles away. They have privately fumed
about politicians - such as Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) -- who have publicly
stated that their son was part of a brutal, vengeful slaughter. And they are
livid that no one in the Marine Corps has stepped forward to defend their
son. "He's
very confident he did nothing wrong, and we believe him," Theresa
Sharratt said in a recent interview in the family home in Canonsburg, Pa.,
which is south of Pittsburgh. Her husband wiped his eyes and added: "He
felt he was doing his job. And, now, the Marine Corps has betrayed these
guys. All of them." The
incident in Haditha was not widely known until the past spring, when Time
magazine wrote an account of the civilian deaths in a small group of homes in
the insurgent hotbed. Early reports alleged that Marines with Kilo Company,
3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, snapped after a member of their unit was killed
by a roadside bomb, sending them on a rampage through nearby homes. There
were also allegations of a coverup. Attorneys
for the Marines - including Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the most senior
noncommissioned officer at the scene of the shootings - have said repeatedly
that their clients followed the appropriate rules of engagement and killed
the civilians as they were hunting insurgents responsible both for the
roadside bombing and for a volley of shots from what the Marines believed
were AK-47 assault rifles. "They
responded the way they were trained," said Jack B. Zimmerman, an
attorney for Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, 25, who officials believe was one of
the Marines who fired shots. "Anytime you're involved in house-to-house
urban warfare in an inhabited area, there's going to be the risk that
civilians will be in harm's way. It's very unfortunate that women and
children died, but the issue here is what was going through these guys' minds
when they were taking fire, and did they respond the way they were trained
to?" Marine
Corps officials have declined to comment about the case, as a nine-month
investigation rests in the hands of prosecutors who have not yet decided on
charges. A high-level review of whether commanders did not appropriately
investigate the Haditha incident was completed in Iraq in July and the
results are with commanders there, though Pentagon officials have so far
declined to release the findings. Wuterich,
through his attorneys, has outlined a scenario that portrays the Marines
reacting in a clinical way, noting that the squad was taking fire from the
houses and attacked them, "clearing" rooms with grenades and
gunfire. In
a separate account, recently obtained by The Washington Post, other Marines
in the squad reported seeing, hearing and feeling gunshots flying over their
heads in short bursts immediately before they entered the houses. The scenes
inside, according to the account, were chaotic, as Marines threw
fragmentation grenades and then fired shots through the dust and smoke. One
Marine who was in the convoy that day said that no one overreacted to the
death of their friend, Cpl. Miguel "TJ" Terrazas, and that the
troops focused on the mission. Answering written questions under the
condition of anonymity, the Marine said no one seemed to be out for revenge.
Instead, he said, the men wanted to make sure comrades came out from the
ambush alive. "If
they were going to charge us, then you may as well charge every Marine and
soldier in Iraq," the Marine said. He added that members of his squad
"did not realize that civilians had been killed until they went back
through the houses to assess collateral damage." Military
officials familiar with the investigation said there is some evidence that
could show wrongdoing, including images, taken by an unmanned aircraft, that
appear to show that a group of civilians shot near their car - which had
approached the Marine convoy after the bomb went off - were executed. At
least one Marine has told officials that he saw another Marine standing over
the bodies and emptying his rifle's clip into them, according to two people
closely familiar with the case. Others
have said that the shots that killed women and children inside the houses
appeared to be "well-aimed," though defense attorneys have
challenged that assessment as speculation because there is so little physical
evidence to support it. The official investigation did not begin until months
after the shootings, and some critical evidence was lost. It
is unclear what, if any, charges the Marines will face. Officials said this
week that criminal charges could be announced in the next few weeks against
as many as half a dozen men. "My
client did not engage in any conduct that we believe is criminal," said
Gary Myers, an attorney for Sharratt. "Our position is that anything he
did engaging the enemy was consistent with rules of engagement at the
time." Sharratt
enlisted in the Marines just before his 18th birthday - a decision his family
supported - and deployed to Iraq in 2004. He spent time in Fallujah, where he
took part in the major offensive to take the city and used close-combat
"clearing" tactics on enemy houses. He was deployed to Haditha the
next year. The
Sharratts used to worry about their son's safety and how he dealt with the
loss of friends - "Don't worry about me, I can handle it," he had
said to his mother. Now they worry that he is caught up in a political storm. "Somebody's
going to pay, and we're so afraid it's going to be the young guys,"
Theresa Sharratt said. "He believes he didn't do anything wrong." But
Darryl Sharratt says America has already convicted his son and the other
Marines, and he feels helpless, lost, as he awaits a decision on possible
charges. "For
18 years, I protected him. And now I can't do anything about it," he
said. "I just want the Marine Corps to stand up and say the Marines
couldn't have done this and didn't do it. I blame them for letting it go on
for this long." ©
2006 The Washington Post Company External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112101568.html |