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May 31st,
2007 - 2 Marines Deny Suspecting Haditha War Crime News article by the New York
Times |
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2 Marines Deny
Suspecting Haditha War Crime By Paul von Zielbauer New York Times May 31, 2007 Camp Pendleton, Calif., May
30 - Two Marine junior officers, in testimony made public on Wednesday, said
they had no reason to suspect a possible war crime when they inspected the
human carnage, including the bodies of 10 women and children, after an infantry
attack that killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005. But one of the officers,
First Lt. Alexander Martin, suggested that one of the consequences of the
Marine unit’s killing of civilians - which followed a roadside bomb blast
that killed one marine and wounded two others - was that Haditha residents
became noticeably more helpful, if not quite friendly, to the Americans. “After 19 November,”
Lieutenant Martin said in videotaped testimony, referring to the day the
civilians were killed in 2005, “I had people coming up to me to tell me where
the I.E.D.’s were.” I.E.D. stands for improvised
explosive device, or roadside bomb. The other officer
testifying, First Lt. Max D. Frank, offered a detailed and gruesome accounting
of the human remains - including the bodies of six children and two women on
one bed - that the officers saw in three homes that had been attacked by a
squad of infantryman searching for insurgents whom they suspected of
detonating the roadside bomb. The testimony introduced on
Wednesday, both videotaped in March because the officers were to return to
Iraq, came at a hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, a former commander
of the Third Battalion, First Marines, who is one of four officers charged
with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the Haditha killings
properly. In his own videotaped
testimony, Lieutenant Frank told a Marine prosecutor that each of the eight
bodies he found on the bed had “multiple holes” in it, and that one child’s
head was missing. But Lieutenant Frank repeatedly said in his testimony that
he had never considered the possibility that a war-crime violation had
occurred, the legal threshold under Marine Corps regulations that compels an
episode to be reported to a superior officer. “It was unfortunate what
happened, sir,” Lieutenant Frank told the marine prosecutor, Lt. Col. Sean
Sullivan, “but I didn’t have any reason to believe that what they had done
was on purpose,” he said of the Marine infantrymen who killed the civilians
in a house-to-house attack after coming under fire from insurgents. He said
he and other officers had agreed to portray the deaths to Haditha town
leaders as an unfortunate and unintended result of local residents’ allowing
insurgent fighters to use family homes to shoot at passing American patrols. After returning to the
Marine base near Haditha on the evening of Nov. 19, 2005, Lieutenant Frank
said, another officer, First Lt. Adam P. Mathes, told him that the Marines
should not issue an apology for wrongfully killing civilians but offer a less
conciliatory statement. Lieutenant Frank said
Lieutenant Mathes, the company’s executive officer, advised a Marine major
assigned to a civil affairs unit that “the best way to explain this to the
Iraqi people” would be to tell them, “It’s an unfortunate thing that happens
when you let terrorists use your house to attack our troops.” Lieutenant Frank, who
testified after being granted immunity from prosecution in the Haditha case,
said he complained to the company commander about the way that marines were
forced to photograph and collect the 24 bodies. The marines had only four or
five body bags at the base and used them to collect the largest of the dead
civilians, said Lieutenant Frank. The children’s remains were placed in trash
bags, he said. When the marines’ four-Humvee convoy carrying the bodies
arrived at a local hospital morgue that evening, Iraqi workers reacted in
horror and some vomited at the sight, he testified. Copyright 2007 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/world/middleeast/31haditha.html Marine says scene of Haditha
slayings was disturbing U.S. lieutenant who helped clear bodies testifies that he saw no
reason to suspect foul play in the 2005 deaths of 24 Iraqis. By Tony Perry Los Angeles Times May 31, 2007 Camp Pendleton - A Marine
lieutenant testified Wednesday that he had never considered that Marines
might have done anything wrong in killing 24 people in the Iraqi town of
Haditha, even as he found the bodies of two women and six children huddled on
a bed. Lt. Max Frank, who had been
ordered to take the bodies to the city morgue, said he assumed that the
Marines had "cleared" three houses of suspected insurgents according
to their standing orders - by throwing in fragmentation grenades and entering
with blasts of M-16 fire. The smoke from the grenades,
Frank said, would have kept the Marines from seeing that they were firing on
women and children. "It was unfortunate,
but I had no reason to believe anything they had done was on purpose,"
Frank said during a videotaped deposition. His testimony came on the
first day of an Article 32 hearing, akin to a preliminary hearing, for Lt.
Col. Jeffrey Chessani. The Haditha killings are seen as the largest atrocity
allegation against U.S. troops in Iraq. Chessani, 43, is charged
with dereliction of duty and violating a lawful order for not ordering a
complete investigation of the incident as a possible war crime. He was the
commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, but was
relieved of command during the investigation that led to charges against him,
three other officers and four enlisted Marines. The military ordered an
investigation only after Time magazine published a lengthy report that
contradicted the Marines' initial account portraying the deaths on Nov. 19, 2005,
as the result of a roadside bombing and crossfire between Marines and
insurgents. Sgt. Maj. Edward Sax, who
was the battalion's senior enlisted man, testified Wednesday that he assumed
Chessani had conducted an investigation immediately after the incident.
Later, he said, he asked Chessani whether "the Marines had done the
right thing." Chessani replied,
"'Everything was OK,'" Sax said. Sax indicated his confidence
was shaken after he heard that the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich,
had told his Marines to "shoot first and ask questions later." "That's a bad and
damning comment to make for a Marine leader," Sax said. Wuterich faces 12 charges of
unpremeditated murder for using "deadly force without conducting
positive identification" to determine that the persons in the house, and
in a car outside, were insurgents. The prosecution asserts that
Wuterich's squad went on a rampage after a roadside bomb went off under a
Humvee in his convoy, killing a Marine. The 24 slain Iraqis included three
women and seven children. Defense attorneys say that the Marines were
"clearing" houses after coming under gunfire from one of the homes. Frank testified that he saw
no indication that insurgents had been using the houses. He said he saw no
weapons and no shell casings during the 10 hours he was on the scene. Chessani's attorneys say
that their client's superiors were aware that women and children had been
killed and yet opted not to order an investigation. The attorneys allege that
residents of Haditha, a town 130 miles northwest of Baghdad in Al Anbar
province, concocted a story to obscure the fact that they were helping
insurgents. "The terrorists are
laughing in their caves," Brian Rooney, one of Chessani's lawyers, told
reporters. "This is what they want: For us to put each other on trial.
This is the culmination of their propaganda campaign that began Nov.
19," the day of the incident. Marines ordered to remove
the bodies "were really disturbed about it" and said such things as
"Hey, this is really gross," Frank said. Hours later, Frank
testified, officers talked about what to say in explaining the incident to
the town elders in Haditha, a onetime insurgent stronghold in the Euphrates
River Valley. He said a fellow lieutenant
told him, "We should explain it as an unfortunate thing that happens
when terrorists use your homes to attack our forces." Frank testified under
immunity. Other Marines have received similar protection. One of the four
enlisted Marines initially charged in the killings has had charges dropped in
exchange for his testimony. The hearing officer, Col.
Christopher Colin, an infantry officer, will make a recommendation to Lt.
Gen. James N. Mattis, commanding officer of Marines Forces Central Command,
on whether the case should proceed to court-martial, be dropped or be handled
through administrative procedures. The hearing is expected to take at least a
week. External link:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-abuse31may31,1,5859462.story |