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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 19th,
2007 - Agent Says Pendleton Marine Knew He Shot Child |
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Agent Says
Pendleton Marine Knew He Shot Child By Teri Figueroa North County Times July 19, 2007 12:54 AM PDT Camp Pendleton - Lance Cpl.
Stephen Tatum saw the child - young, dark-haired, wearing a white T-shirt and
standing on a bed in his Haditha home - but pulled the trigger, an
investigator testified Wednesday that Tatum told him. "There was a pause, a
little hesitation, and then he said, 'That's the room where I saw the kid
that I shot. Knowing it was a kid, I shot him anyway," Naval Criminal
Investigative Service agent Matthew Marshall said Tatum told him during an
interrogation four months after the shooting. Tatum's attorneys dispute
Marshall's contention and say Tatum never swore to or signed the statements
that Marshall said Tatum made. They also argue that the statements attributed
to their client, a 26-year-old Oklahoma native, are inadmissible in court. The lance corporal is one of
three Marines charged with the deaths of some of the 24 Iraqis killed in
Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005. The case is the largest war crimes prosecution to
emerge from Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Tatum is in a Camp Pendleton
courtroom this week for an investigative hearing, much like a preliminary
hearing in civilian court, to determine if there is enough evidence to send
him to trial. NCIS agents also testified
about their interviews with a 6-year-old boy and his 10-year-old sister who
survived but were orphaned in the attack on their home. Prosecutors say Tatum and
other Marines stormed homes and killed 24 Iraqis in retaliation for a bombing
that shredded a Humvee in their convoy. The bombing killed Lance Cpl. Miguel
"TJ" Terrazas and wounded two others. Attorneys for Tatum and his
co-defendants say the Marines were the target of enemy gunfire after the
explosion, and had run into the homes to chase their attackers. Tatum is accused of killing
people in the first two of the four houses the Marines stormed that day in
search of insurgent fighters. His attorneys said this week that their client
was following orders and defending himself properly in combat. Marshall, testifying as a
prosecution witness, said Tatum told him that he and three other Marines
followed a fleeing person from the first home to the second. There, they shot
a man at a door and lobbed a grenade into a washroom, Tatum said While searching the home,
Tatum heard his squad leader, then Sgt. Frank Wuterich, firing his gun, so he
ran into the room and also fired at the people inside, according to
Marshall's testimony about what Tatum told him. "At that time, he
stated that he'd (identified) them as women and children," Marshall
said. "I asked if he shot them, and he said yes. He was very emotional
about it, very sorry to the point that he cried." In a later interview,
Marshall testified, Tatum again told him he knew the people were women and
children. "He stated that women and
children can hurt you, too, as justification for shooting them,"
Marshall said. Tatum's attorney, Kyle
Sampson, often sparred with Marshall through a lively cross-examination,
during which Marshall said he did not record any of his interviews with Tatum,
in accordance with NCIS policy. Marshall said the reports he generated after
questioning Tatum were "factual representations" of what he said
Tatum told him. Marshall also acknowledged
that Tatum had told him at least once that he had "unknowingly" shot
women and children. Tatum was first questioned
by NCIS agents in what the case's lead agent, Brian Brittingham, testified
was the only room the Marines made available to them -- the same
urine-smelling, concrete subterranean room in Haditha where Marines had
interrogated Iraqis. That first session with NCIS
lasted more than 12 hours. While on the stand,
Brittingham also said he interviewed Eman Waleen Al Hameed, a 10-year-old
girl who survived when the Marines stormed her home. Her parents were killed
in her home, also a set of her grandparents, an aunt and a 4-year-old
brother. "She said the Americans
raided her house and killed her family and left," Brittingham said of an
interview he did with her four months after the deaths. External link: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/07/19/news/top_stories/1_03_037_18_07.txt |