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June 1st,
2007 - Haditha Killings Detailed at Hearing News article by the Los Angeles
Times |
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Haditha Killings Detailed at
Hearing A prosecutor at Camp Pendleton says some Iraqis were shot by Marines
at close range. By Tony Perry Los Angeles Times June 1, 2007 Camp Pendleton - Some of the
24 Iraqis killed by Marines in Haditha in late 2005 were shot in the head,
several of them at such close range that the bodies had powder burns, a
prosecutor said Thursday. As a hush came over the
courtroom, Lt. Col. Paul Atterbury listed some of the victims, including an
unarmed 66-year-old woman, a young woman shot while sitting with her back to
a wall, a teenage girl shot while on a bed, an elderly man whose leg was
severed by a grenade and a woman killed while trying in vain to protect
several small children. Atterbury added that five
young men killed near their car apparently were standing still, possibly with
their hands in the air to surrender. No weapons were found in the
car or near the men's bodies, Atterbury said. Nor were any weapons found in
the three homes where members of three families were killed as Marines
"cleared" the houses with fragmentation grenades and M-16 fire,
according to a Marine lieutenant who inspected the houses and removed the bodies. The testimony came on the
second day of an Article 32 inquiry, similar to a preliminary hearing, for
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, 43. He is accused of dereliction of duty and
failure to follow an order for not launching an investigation of the Nov. 19,
2005, incident in which Marines in his battalion killed 24 Iraqis, including
three women, seven children and several elderly men. After the grisly recitation,
Atterbury asked a Defense Department lawyer considered an expert in the laws
involving war crimes whether the facts surrounding the deaths should have
been sufficient for the battalion commander to call for an outside
investigation. "To me, it's quite
clear," said W. Hays Parks, one of the key authors of the military's
rules requiring commanders to report any "possible, alleged or
suspected" crime by their troops. He said that such rules were adopted
after the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which commanders made only cursory
inquiries in the days after the mass killing. "The idea is to
encourage the commander to continue the battle but turn over incidents to
competent investigators rather than doing it themselves," Parks said. Prosecutors say Chessani
made only a superficial inquiry after the killings, accepting at face value
the assertion by enlisted personnel that the Iraqis were killed while the
Marines were clearing houses from which insurgents had been firing at them. But defense attorneys have
said Chessani, who was commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment,
told superiors that women and children had been killed and that his superiors
failed to launch an investigation. Brian Rooney, one of
Chessani's lawyers, said the defense disagreed with the prosecution's
characterization of how the Iraqis were killed. He said that no autopsies
were performed and that prosecutors were interpreting photographs of the
bodies taken by military personnel. Chessani is the
highest-ranking officer charged in what is the largest war-crime allegation
involving U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. Three other officers and four
enlisted Marines also have been charged in the case. External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-haditha1jun01,1,1575529.story Expert says Haditha killings
demanded immediate probe By Mark Walker North County Times June 1, 2007 12:28 AM PDT Camp Pendleton - The deaths
of at least five Iraqi women and children shot in the head in Iraq in 2005 by
members of a Camp Pendleton squad should have raised enough suspicion from
Marine commanders for them to order an immediate investigation, a Pentagon
law of war expert said Thursday. In all, 24 Iraqi civilians
died at the hands of the Marines on Nov. 19 in the village of Haditha. The
sheer number of deaths should have set off alarms throughout the chain of
command, said the expert, longtime Defense Department attorney and law of war
specialist W. Hays Parks. Parks' comments came during
testimony on the second day of a hearing to determine whether a Marine
officer should face trial on dereliction of duty charges for failing to order
a probe into killings that took place after a roadside bomb destroyed a
Humvee. A lance corporal was killed and two other Marines were injured in the
explosion. The officer at the center of
the hearing, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, was commander of the 3rd Battalion,
1st Marine Regiment in Haditha when the killings occurred. Three other
officers face similar charges, and three enlisted men face murder charges. The prosecutor, Lt. Col.
Paul Atterbury, described in graphic terms how some of the victims died. He
said that the women and children found in a bedroom in one of four homes
stormed by the Marines after the bombing appeared to have died from head
wounds. Given that detail, Parks
said that even a cursory examination by commanders on the scene should have
indicated that something was wrong. "The substantial number
of head shots does not suggest a resisting force," Parks said. The two months that elapsed
before an investigation was launched in the wake of questions from a Time
magazine journalist resulted in more harm to U.S. prestige than an immediate
probe would have generated, Parks said. "Bad news doesn't get
any better with time," said Parks, a former Marine Corps officer who has
worked on war law issues for the Defense Department for more than three
decades and serves as a legal adviser for special operations missions.
"It just makes the situation worse." The Marines who carried out
the killings contended the civilians died as a result of crossfire during a
small arms attack the Kilo Company squad faced immediately after the bombing. However, a later
investigation by U.S. officials showed that 19 of the Iraqis died after
Marines entered three homes in which no insurgents were found and no weapons
were recovered. Five men who drove up
immediately after the bombing were the first Iraqis to die, killed after
being ordered out of their car and held at gunpoint with their hands in the
air, according to testimony from one of the Marines who took part in their
shooting. Called by the government,
Parks spent more than six hours on the stand, spending much of it explaining
how he helped write a regulation that requires an investigation whenever a
"possible, alleged or suspected" violation of the law of war occurs. After hearing several
descriptions from Atterbury about what happened in Haditha, Parks said:
"The fact is, a crime appears to have been committed. How could you not
investigate that?" The lack of any insurgent
bodies or weapons being recovered from the car or any of the homes presented
other red flags, he said. When the prosecution
finished its questioning, Chessani's military attorney, Lt. Col. John
Shuleburne, rose and said the defense would have no questions. One of the Chessani's
civilian attorneys, Brian Rooney, later said the defense will contend that he
reported the killings up the chain of command immediately after learning of
them and that higher-ranking Marines needed to determine if a formal
investigation was warranted, Rooney said. The only other witness to
appear Thursday, Lt. Col. Eric Smith, was called by prosecutors to give his
opinion on the responsibilities of a battalion commander. "If you shoot and
injure or kill someone that didn't need to be killed, I'm going to
investigate that," said Smith, who has served three combat tours. Testimony in the hearing
continues this morning and is expected to last through the end of next week.
If ordered to trial and convicted, Chessani could face more than two years in
prison and dismissal from the service. External link:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/06/01/news/top_stories/40_15_326_1_07.txt |