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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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June 5th,
2007 - No ‘Bad Guys’ Amid the 19 Bodies News article by the Los Angeles Times |
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No ‘Bad Guys’ Amid the 19 Bodies Marines did not first verify that insurgents were in homes before
unarmed Iraqis were killed, officer testifies. By Tony Perry Los Angeles Times June 5, 2007 Camp Pendleton - The officer
who gave the order that led to Marines killing 19 unarmed Iraqis in their
Haditha homes testified Monday that none of his troops had positively
identified the houses as containing insurgents before he ordered them
"cleared." 1st Lt. William Kallop said
he still believed his Marines acted properly because they later told him of
hearing the distinctive "metal on metal" sound of AK-47s being
prepared to fire in the first house and then took fire from the second house.
Kallop said that two Marines told him that they began throwing fragmentation
grenades after hearing AK-47s. But Kallop, testifying in a
preliminary hearing of the ex-commander of the troops' battalion, said he
inspected the houses later and found no AK-47s, no shells or other evidence
that insurgents had been inside. "I looked at Cpl.
[Hector] Salinas and said: 'What the crap? Where are the bad guys?' He looked
as surprised as I was," Kallop said in videotaped testimony. Kallop, who has since
returned to Iraq, was given immunity to force him to testify in what has
become the largest case of alleged abuse of civilians levied against U.S.
forces in Iraq. In all, 24 Iraqis, including women and children, were killed
in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005. Kallop testified that Staff
Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the squad leader who led the assault, did not tell
him that the Marines fired their M-16s and threw grenades while inside the
houses. A report by Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents said many of
the Iraqis were shot in the head, some at such close range that their bodies
had powder marks. Kallop's testimony came on
the fourth day of the hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, who was
commander of 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, on the day of the deaths. Chessani, 1st Lt. Andrew A.
Grayson, Capt. Lucas M. McConnell and Capt. Randy W. Stone are charged with
dereliction of duty for not investigating the incident as a possible war
crime. Grayson headed a team that examined the houses and took pictures;
McConnell was the Kilo Company commander; and Stone was the battalion lawyer. The Marines who assaulted
the houses - Wuterich, Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt and Lance Cpl. Stephen
B. Tatum - are charged with unpremeditated murder. Similar charges were
dropped against Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz in exchange for his testimony
against the others. The incident began when a
roadside bomb exploded beneath the last Humvee in a resupply convoy. Lance
Cpl. Miguel Terrazas was killed instantly and two other Marines were injured. Moments later five young
Iraqi men were ordered out of a nearby car and fatally shot by Marines. Kallop, a platoon commander,
arrived at the scene more than two hours after the explosion that killed
Terrazas. He testified that Marines told him of hearing gunfire to the south
and north of their location near the wrecked Humvee but that none
specifically pointed out the three houses nearly 330 feet away across a
vacant field. "I decided the house
was most likely the place where the fire was coming from and told Sgt. Wuterich
to 'clear south,'" Kallop said. He testified that Wuterich
told him after assaulting the houses that the occupants in the first house
had said insurgents had fled into the second house. Prosecutors alleged that
Wuterich's account was false. Under questioning by
prosecutors, Kallop conceded that he asked few questions at the scene. He did
not ask, for example, about the five men in the street, or how civilians were
killed in the second house, or whether Marines found any weapons in the
houses. Kallop said his Marines had
"cleared" hundreds of houses in preceding weeks without incident.
But Terrazas was Kilo Company's first fatality and Marines were convinced
that insurgents had mounted a "coordinated, complex attack," according
to testimony. A key point in Chessani's
hearing is why his Marines, despite being repeatedly told to use more
restraint in Haditha than they did during the major assault on Fallouja in
late 2004, reverted almost reflexively to more aggressive tactics. In Fallouja, civilians had
largely fled the city and insurgents were barricaded inside homes, waiting
for Marines to burst through doors. Haditha, however, was a densely populated
city. "You can't use
Fallouja-style room-clearing in a place like Haditha," W. Hays Parks, a
Defense Department lawyer and an expert on the laws of war, testified last
week. External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-haditha5jun05,1,2979332.story Legal officer says no one
questioned Haditha deaths By Mark Walker North County Times June 5, 2007 10:12 PM PDT Camp Pendleton - No
commanders sought a probe into the deaths of two dozen Iraqi civilians in
Haditha in the days and weeks after the incident, a Marine Corps legal
affairs officer testified Tuesday. The testimony from the
officer, Maj. Carroll Connelly, came on the sixth day of a hearing for Lt.
Col. Jeffrey Chessani, one of four officers from Camp Pendleton's 3rd
Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment charged with dereliction of duty for failing
to order an investigation into the killings that would draw worldwide
condemnation when brought to light several months later. The hearing will determine
whether Chessani, the highest-ranking officer charged with wrongdoing arising
from the Haditha incident, will be ordered to court-martial. Connelly said his bosses
would routinely direct him to make inquiries into Iraqi civilian injuries or
deaths resulting from contact with U.S. troops. But that didn't happen in
the Haditha killings, he said, because an initial, inaccurate report said the
deaths stemmed from a roadside bombing followed by a gunbattle with
insurgents. Civilian deaths in combat situations generally did not warrant
investigation, Connelly said. It would later be shown that
19 of the 24 Iraqis were killed inside homes where no insurgents and no
weapons were found. "My understanding, at
least at the time, was that they were out in the open," Connelly said of
the first report, which said 15 civilians had been killed as a result of the
bombing and small-arms fire. "(The report) says they were out moving
past the vehicles." Connelly was serving as one
of the 1st Marine Regiment's command staff attorneys when the slayings took
place on Nov. 19, 2005. Chessani was the battalion
commander until he was removed from that post in the fallout from the
incident when the unit returned in April 2006. The civilians died after
Marines from the battalion's Kilo Company reported they were under small-arms
attack following the bombing and were engaged in a fight with their
attackers. The slayings occurred over a roughly four-hour period after the
bomb killed a lance corporal and injured two other Marines. The first five Iraqis to die
were all young men, none of whom were killed by the bomb or in any crossfire.
They died after being ordered from a car that drove up after the bombing and
were shot at close range, according to testimony from one of the Marines who
took part in that shooting. The victims were later determined to be students
on their way to a college in Ramadi. If the initial report had in
any way indicated that the civilians were killed inside their homes where no
insurgents nor weapons were found, Connelly said he would have raised
questions. He also testified that a
formal demand for an investigation from the Haditha town council eight days
after the killings was never brought to his attention. He said he also did
not know until much later that the dead included several women and children
found lying in supplicant positions inside a bedroom. "It was something
different than what I had always pictured," Connelly said. Chessani's attorneys
maintain that he fully reported everything he knew about the incident,
relying on that first report. It was up to commanders above him to order an
investigation if they thought one was warranted, the attorneys contend. Over the course of the
hearing, prosecutors have repeatedly tried to show that Chessani learned a
lot more about the killings in the days immediately after the first report.
Prosecutors have focused many of their questions around the town council
complaint that was presented to Chessani, suggesting that he failed to fully
report that development to his superiors. The killings did not get
formally investigated until last spring and only after questions were raised
by a Time magazine reporter who had heard of complaints from survivors of the
dead. Also testifying Tuesday in a
base courtroom, where the Chessani hearing is playing out as his family
members watch from seats directly behind him, was 1st Lt. Mark Towers, who
previously served under Chessani. "He's a godly
man," Towers said of the lieutenant colonel, whose defense team includes
two attorneys from the Christian-based Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor,
Mich. "I know he has a lot of integrity ... and I know he took care of
his Marines." The hearing will conclude
this week when Chessani is expected to make an unsworn statement that will
not be subject to cross-examination. Attorneys will then present final
arguments. From there, the hearing
officer, Col. Christopher Conlin, will write a report to Lt. Gen. James
Mattis stating whether he believes the case should move forward to
court-martial or that some other action should be taken. Mattis is commander
of Marine Corps forces in the Middle East and as such is the "convening
authority" over the Haditha prosecutions under the Uniform Code of
Military Justice. The other officers accused
of dereliction of duty are Capts. Randy Stone and Lucas McConnell and 1st Lt.
Andrew Grayson. A pretrial hearing for Stone took place last month. The
hearing officer who presided over Stone's case has yet to announce whether he
believes Stone should face court-martial. The first pretrial hearing
for one of three enlisted men charged with murder in the Haditha deaths is
scheduled to start Monday when Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt is due in court.
Sharratt is accused of three counts of unpremeditated murder and could be
sentenced to life in prison if ordered to trial and convicted. The two other enlisted
defendants charged with murder are Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who led the
platoon, and Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum. Their hearings are scheduled to take
place later this summer. External link: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/06/06/news/top_stories/1_01_336_5_07.txt |