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December 23rd,
2006 - Haditha Residents Have no Faith in US Trial of Marines News
article by the Chicago Sun-Times |
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Haditha Residents Have no Faith
in US Trial of Marines The Peninsula December 23, 2006 Haditha, Iraq - Iraqis in
Haditha, where 24 unarmed civilians were killed last year, said yesterday
four US Marines charged with their murder should be executed, a penalty they
will not face in the United States. “They should hand them over
to us so that we can kill them. They do not deserve a trial,” said one young
man who refused to give his name. Khaled Salman, whose sister
Asmaa was among 24 people killed in Haditha, gathered with friends in the
early hours of Friday to watch television coverage of the charges being
announced. “Those soldiers killed 24
people. They killed women and children, isn’t that enough for them be
executed? Just so that the family can have peace,” said Salman, 41. “It’s a political trial and
it will not bring our rights back,” said Salman, visibly angry. None of the murder charges
carries a possible death sentence because the Marines are charged with
unpremeditated murder, and the maximum possible sentence is life in prison. It was midnight in Iraq when
the US military announced it had charged four Marines with murder and four
others with dereliction of duty in the November 2005 killing in Haditha, in
the restive province of Anbar northwest of Baghdad. Iraqi witnesses say enraged
Marines shot the civilians in their homes to retaliate for the death of a
popular comrade who was ripped in half by a bomb that hit a convoy in the
town. However, the four Marines –
Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz, Lance Corporal
Justin Sharratt and Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum – face only prison sentences
because the charge is of unpremeditated, not premeditated, murder. Defence lawyers dispute the
Iraqi witnesses’ version of events and say the Marines were engaged in a furious
battle in Haditha after the bomb exploded and the civilians may have been
killed during the chaos. Many in Haditha, a town of
over 100,000 people on the Euphrates river, stayed up to watch coverage on
Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera. The trial was the talk of the town
yesterday, and many were glued to the screen watching special coverage. They
had little confidence in US justice. Talal Saed, a judge who
watched the news at Salman’s home, said: “If I were the judge on that trial I
would have sentenced them to death for the terrible crime they have
committed. They should be tried in Iraq and under the Iraqi law.” External link:
http://tinyurl.com/y6zymk By Steve Warmbir Chicago Sun-Times December 23, 2006 Marine Sgt. Sanick P. Dela
Cruz was the kind of young man a mother wanted to see at her door, waiting to
pick her daughter up for a date, according to people who know him. Dela Cruz, 24, was always
"yes, ma'am, no, sir." He took pride in tending the
landscaping as part of a school program at Wells Community High School. "You wish you had a
classroom full of guys like him," said one of his former teachers, Ted
Dallas. So the charges this week
against him and three other Marines that they took part in the slaying of 24
civilians in Iraq have left Dela Cruz's friends and colleagues reeling. The
attack came after a land mine exploded, killing one of the Marine's
colleagues. Dela Cruz was charged
Thursday with killing five people and lying to authorities investigating the
November 2005 incident in Haditha. He faces life in prison if convicted. He is remembered fondly at
Wells, in the 900 block of North Ashland, where he was a leader in the high
school ROTC program. "That's not the boy I
knew," said the school's registrar, Betsy Garcia, of the charges against
Dela Cruz. "That's not the boy I know. It's just so surreal." Dela Cruz had long wanted to
join the Marines and did just that after he graduated in 2002. After he finished basic
training, he returned to visit the school and noticed the bushes behind the
building were in bad shape. ‘A guy we could count on’ "He said, 'These plants
look terrible.' I told him, 'We need you to come back to take care of
them,'" Garcia said. Dallas ran the horticulture
program for the school when Dela Cruz was there. He said Dela Cruz never
sassed him and was trusted with the keys to the equipment storage areas. "I trusted him with
everything," said Dallas, now the vice president of the Chicago Teachers
Union. Dela Cruz came to the United
States as a young boy from the Philippines and lived with a female relative
in Chicago. "A lot of our kids go
into the military. It's a way to get out from under and make something of
yourself," Dallas said. Teachers and staff at the
school never saw a trace of violence in him. They usually just saw a
smile on his face. "He was a guy we could
count on," Dallas said. External link: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/184014,CST-NWS-marine23.article Haditha Marine home for Pa.
Christmas Allison Hoffman Associated Press December 23, 2006 San Clemente, Calif. -
Theresa and Darryl Sharratt spent the past two Christmases worrying their
son, Marine Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, might not come home from Iraq alive. This year, a different
shadow looms over the holiday: the possibility it is his last as a free man. Sharratt was one of four
Marines charged with murder Thursday in the violent deaths of Iraqi civilians
in Haditha, the U.S. military's deadliest criminal case to emerge from the
Iraq war. He faces a life sentence if convicted. "I never could have
imagined this happening in my life," said his father, Darryl, 53,
holding back tears. "All we wanted was for him to come home safe." Theresa Sharratt, 50, feared
her son would be taken to the brig after the charges were announced at Camp
Pendleton. "They told me not to expect him to come home with all this
going on," she said. Instead, Sharratt and his
family, who spoke to a reporter at a San Clemente restaurant, are returning
from California to Canonsburg, Pa. They'll gather there for a traditional
Catholic feast of fish and shrimp, decorate holiday cookies and play with the
family cat, Rambo, before leaving for a short ski trip. In a brief interview the
Marine - a quiet, stocky 22-year-old who hid GI Joe dolls in his family's
tree as a child - said he was relieved to finally know what charges he faces
in the nine-month investigation. "I'm doing all
right," said Sharratt, a rifleman with the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines
Regiment, who served a tour in Fallujah before his deployment to Haditha last
year. "I'm looking forward to going home." In Meriden, Conn., the
family of another Marine accused of murder in the case, Staff Sgt. Frank
Wuterich, 26, was devastated by the allegations. "It's just very hard -
that's our son," said his mother, Rosemarie Wuterich, 61. "He's not
a murderer." Wuterich, the squad's
leader, was distracting himself with planning Christmas for his two young
daughters, ages 5 and 7, his mother said. "It has really spoiled
the holiday," she said. "It really only sunk in when I heard what
the charges were." Prosecutors brought murder
charges against Wuterich in the deaths of 12 people and against Sharratt in
the shooting deaths of three brothers. Two other enlisted men were charged
with murder, and four officers were charged with failing to report or
properly investigate the slayings. No hearings have been
scheduled in the case. The Corps says the men are not being locked up for now
because they are unlikely to flee and are not a danger to themselves or
others. In all, 24 civilians were
killed on Nov. 19, 2005. The slayings occurred in the
hours after a roadside bomb exploded under a convoy passing through Haditha,
killing 20-year-old Lance Cpl. Miguel "T.J." Terrazas of El Paso,
Texas, Sharratt's roommate during training. In the aftermath of the
blast, five men were shot as they approached the scene in a taxi and others -
including women and several young children - died as the Marines went house
to house in the area, clearing homes with grenades and gunfire. Through their attorneys, the
four enlisted men say they came under small arms fire after the explosion and
responded using approved tactics to eliminate a perceived threat. Residents of Haditha, a
verdant town along the Euphrates River about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad,
called for all eight men to face capital trials in Iraq for what they say was
an unjustified massacre. Sharratt's family staunchly
defends him. "They keep calling this
a slaughter, but they're innocent until proven guilty," Theresa Sharratt
said. Jaclyn Sharratt, the
Marine's 25-year-old sister, startled herself by calmly stating the facts of
the case. "Justin is charged with
the murder of three men," she said. "That's the first time I've
really said it." © 2006 AP Wire and wire service
sources. All Rights Reserved. External link: http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/16307732.htm |