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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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April 3rd,
2007 - Attorneys for Accused Haditha Officer Fire Another Salvo |
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Attorneys for Accused
Haditha Officer Fire Another Salvo By Mark Walker North County Times April 3, 2007 9:29 AM PDT North County - The
highest-ranking Marine accused of helping cover up two dozen civilian
killings in Iraq in 2005 did nothing wrong in the eyes of several officers
and a senior enlisted man called as witnesses in the case, the accused
officer's attorneys are contending. Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani
properly reported his knowledge of what happened when a squad from Camp
Pendleton killed 24 Iraqis in the city of Haditha after the squad's convoy
was attacked on Nov. 19, 2005, according to Brian Rooney, one of Chessani's
attorneys. "He went out into the
field that night and the next morning to look at the battle sites in Haditha
and he reported up the chain of command exactly what he knew," Rooney
said Monday during a telephone interview. Rooney and Robert Muise, two
former Marine Corps officers, are representing Chessani free of charge
through the auspices of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. The
nonprofit center works on anti-abortion causes and defends conservative
Christians accused of wrongdoing. In sworn statements of seven
Marine Corps officers and a senior enlisted man taken by the attorneys at
Camp Pendleton last week, none indicated that Chessani failed to carry out
his responsibilities in reporting the incident, Rooney said. The statements
were videotaped because the men are deploying to Iraq soon, he said. "What Col. Chessani
told the chain of command, and what these other officers reported right up
through their regiment and to division headquarters, were the facts,"
Rooney said. "There was an engagement and the Marines responded." Chessani was relieved from
his post as 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment commander when the unit
returned from Iraq in the spring of 2006. He remains on duty at the base
pending the outcome of his case. Chessani and three other
officers from the regiment were charged on Dec. 21 with what the Marine Corps
contends was failing to report a violation of the law of armed conflict,
specifically the alleged unwarranted killing of civilians. Four enlisted men under
Chessani's command, including squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, were
charged with murder and negligent homicide. They remain on limited duty. The incident began when the
roadside bomb destroyed a Humvee and killed Cpl. Miguel Terrazas. The Marines
responded by killing five men who emerged from a taxi that happened upon the
scene. They then killed 19 others, including several women and children,
while assaulting three nearby homes. Wuterich faces 13 counts of
murder, two counts of soliciting another to commit an offense and making a
false official statement. He appeared on the CBS program "60
Minutes" last month and defended his actions. The Marine Corps contends
he committed murder by killing or directing the killing of people he was not
certain were enemy combatants. Rooney and Chessani's other
attorneys have been much more vocal than any of the other accused officers'
attorneys. They argue in a fresh round of publicly distributed releases from
the Thomas More Law Center that the native Coloradan is a "political scapegoat"
of anti-war efforts led by U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., and Time magazine,
which was the first to report the Haditha incident. "The allegations from
Murtha and a one-sided Time report that a massacre had occurred led to
pressure and resulted in the notion that there may have been a cover-up when
there was nothing of the sort," Rooney said. The depositions, he said,
help "debunk the false reports." Marine prosecutors will not
comment on the Chessani prosecution or any other pending cases. From their interviews and
review of two voluminous reports on what happened at Haditha, Rooney said it
appears to him that what the enlisted men did that day was not a violation of
the rules of engagement but simply a response to being attacked. Rooney said there were two
other insurgent attacks in Haditha that day leading to 11 Marines being
injured. The attacks were all part of what he said was a coordinated effort. Chessani's initial court
hearing is set for mid-May but could be put off until the end of that month
because of scheduling issues. "We plan a very robust
Article 32 hearing because we are not afraid of the facts and the more facts
that come out the better," Rooney said. A father of five who has
been in the Marine Corps for 19 years, the 42-year-old Chessani was on his
third assignment to Iraq when the killings occurred. The other officers
accused of similar offenses are Capts. Lucas McConnell and Randy Stone and
1st Lt. Andrew Grayson. External link: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/03/news/top_stories/18_43_314_2_07.txt |