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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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May 18th,
2007 - Manteca Marine’s Trial Set for June |
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Manteca Marine’s Trial Set
for June By Ben Marrone Lathrop-Manteca Sun Post May 18, 2007 Manteca - The trial of a
U.S. Marine from Manteca accused of murder, kidnapping and other charges
linked to the killing of a 52-year-old Iraqi civilian last year is set to
begin in less than a month. Lance Cpl. Marshall
Magincalda Jr.’s case has been repeatedly postponed while a military judge
rules on a series of requests from the prosecution and defense attorneys. The
military court has now set a tentative date of June 11 for the start of the
trial, according to Major Jeff Nyhart, a Camp Pendleton spokesman. Magincalda has been held in
the brig at Camp Pendleton near San Diego since he was called back from Iraq
in May of last year. Since then, five of the
eight men charged in the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, a retired policeman
from the village of Hamdania, Iraq, have reached plea deals with military
prosecutors. They received sentences ranging from 12 months to eight years
after agreeing to testify about the circumstances of Awad’s death. Seven Marines and a U.S.
Navy corpsman were accused of taking Awad from his home April 26, 2006, and
shooting him. Prosecutors say the group tried to stage Awad’s death to make it
look as if he had been armed and trying to plant a roadside bomb. Most recently, the judge in
the case, Lt. Col. Eugene Robinson, ruled against Magincalda’s attorney’s
request to close the trial hearings to the public, the North County Times
reported. Magincalda, a 2001 graduate
of Sierra High School in Manteca, is charged with murder, kidnapping,
larceny, assault, housebreaking, conspiracy and making a false official
statement. If found guilty of premeditated murder, he would face a minimum
sentence of life in prison. He was on his third tour of
duty in Iraq last spring. External link: http://sunpost.net/content/view/812/1/ |