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August 30th,
2007 - Haditha Squad Leader in Military Court News article by the Associated
Press |
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Haditha Squad Leader in Military
Court By Thomas Watkins Associated Press August 30, 2007, 4:28 PM Camp Pendleton, Calif. - A
Marine testified Thursday that he saw a roomful of frightened women and
children moments before they were killed by his squad mates in Haditha, Iraq,
but said he did not see who killed them. Lance Cpl. Humberto Mendoza
testified as the first witness at a preliminary military hearing for Staff
Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 27, of Meriden, Conn. Wuterich was charged with
murdering 18 Iraqis in a bloody combat operation that left 24 Iraqi civilians
dead, but at the outset of Thursday's hearing prosecutors withdrew one murder
count. The number of murder counts
makes Wuterich's case the biggest to have emerged against any U.S. service
member to have served in Iraq. The case centers on whether Wuterich, who had
never experienced combat before, acted within Marine rules of engagement when
he shot men by a car and then led his squad in a string of house raids. One of Wuterich's military
defense attorneys, Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, said the government was no longer
charging Wuterich with murdering an Iraqi man who died in the final house
cleared by Marines, leaving him charged with 17 counts of murder. The charge was withdrawn
after the general overseeing the case dismissed charges against another
Marine accused of killing three other men in the same room of the house,
ruling that they posed a legitimate threat, Vokey said. Mendoza described the events
of Nov. 19, 2005, as a fast-flowing series of engagements. After a Marine
Humvee driver was killed in a roadside bomb, the troops raided several homes. "When I opened the
door, the first thing I see is womens and kids laying down on a bed,"
Mendoza, who is from Venezuela and has a heavy accent, recalled seeing in the
second house he helped raid. "I believe they were scared." Mendoza testified that he shot
an unarmed Iraqi man who opened the front door to the home, and that he shot
a different man in another house who he thought was reaching for a weapon.
Mendoza said the killings were within combat rules because the occupants of
the homes had been declared hostile. Mendoza is one of several
Marines to have been given immunity. How useful his testimony will be to
prosecutors was unclear, as Mendoza has claimed not to have directly seen
Wuterich kill anyone in the two houses he helped clear with the defendant. "I think he's a great
Marine, sir," Mendoza said when asked by military defense attorney Maj.
Haytham Faraj what he thought of Wuterich. Wuterich, who like all
Marines in the court wore desert camouflage, sat with his tattooed arms
folded on the table in front of him and appeared to continually grind his
jaw. Wuterich told investigators
in February 2006 that he believed he was taking small-arms fire from a house
close to the explosion, so he told a four-man team to treat the building and
its occupants as hostile, meaning they did not need to identify the occupants
as insurgents before opening fire. "I told them to shoot
first, ask questions later," he told investigators. Mendoza testified that he
saw Wuterich open fire by the scene of the bomb blast before the house
clearing began. Wuterich is accused of shooting five men who had pulled up in
a car at the scene. Again, Mendoza did not specify whether he saw Wuterich
kill anyone. Wuterich's preliminary
hearing forms part of a military Article 32 investigation. It is similar to a
grand jury probe, but in the military the accused is allowed to present his
defense and to cross-examine government witnesses. At the end of the hearing,
investigating officer Lt. Col. Paul Ware will recommend whether Wuterich
should stand trial. Lt. Gen. James Mattis, the general overseeing the case,
makes the final decision. Ware has already presided
over two separate hearings in the case, when he listened to evidence against
two of Wuterich's lance corporals - Stephen Tatum and Justin Sharratt - who
were charged with murder. In both cases, Ware found prosecutors could not
prove the Marines operated outside combat rules, and he recommended the
charges be dismissed. Mendoza also testified
during Tatum's hearing, after which Ware ruled that Mendoza's testimony was
weak and "not credible." Prosecutors last year
charged four enlisted Marines with murder and four officers with dereliction
of duty for failing to investigate the killings. In all, prosecutors have
since dropped charges against two of the enlisted Marines and one officer. Wuterich is also charged
with making a false official statement and telling another Marine to do the
same. He faces a possible life sentence and dishonorable discharge if
court-martialed. © 2007 The Associated Press External link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/5096512.html Wuterich
hearing in Haditha killings underway at Camp Pendleton By Mark Walker North County Times August 30, 2007 2:02 PM PDT Camp Pendleton - A Marine
lance corporal testified Thursday morning that he never saw his squad leader
kill any Iraqis inside two homes that were assaulted by a group of Camp
Pendleton Marines in Haditha in 2005 after a roadside bombing. Lance Cpl. Humberto Mendoza
told a packed base courtroom that the homes were stormed on the heels of a
roadside bombing that killed one Marine and injured two others. Mendoza was the first to
testify at a hearing for Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who is accused of
murdering 17 of 24 Iraqi civilians slain after the bombing. An 18th count of
murder against the 27-year-old Connecticut native for the slaying of one of
four brothers killed inside another house was dropped, prosecutors announced
at the start of the hearing. Mendoza, who was granted
immunity in exchange for his testimony, said he shot two men during the
assault, including one Iraqi man whom he said Wuterich ordered him to kill. "Wait until I open the
door and shoot," Mendoza quoted Wuterich as saying. Wuterich has told
investigators he was taking small-arms fire from a house near the explosion
and ordered his troops to consider anyone inside as an enemy. "I told them to shoot
first, ask questions later," he told authorities last year. Mendoza testified that he
had identified several women and children inside a bedroom of the second
house and told a fellow Marine they posed no threat. But that Marine, Lance Cpl.
Stephen Tatum, ordered the then Pvt. Mendoza to kill them, he testified. When
he refused the order, Mendoza said Tatum went inside the room and that he
soon heard noises and learned later that everyone had been killed. Wuterich was leading a squad
of Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment on a resupply and mail
run mission when the bomb exploded about 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 19, 2005. A short time later, a
support force including Kilo Company platoon commander 1st Lt. William
Kallop, who has testified in a previous hearing that he ordered Wuterich and
his men to "clear" houses near the site of the bombing. That part of the events at
Haditha came after five men who emerged from a car moments after the bombing
were shot and killed, resulting in five of the now 17 murder charges against
Wuterich. Mendoza testified only that
he saw Wuterich shooting at the car but did not specifically say he saw him
shoot any of those men. Wuterich's attorneys
maintain a forensic reconstruction of the scene of the car killings will
exonerate their client and that the Iraqis killed inside their homes died as
he and his squad members were carrying out a legitimate combat action in
response to being attacked. The hearing began with the
tattooed Wuterich answering some perfunctory questions posed by the
investigating officer, Lt. Col. Paul Ware. He is the same hearing officer who
recommended earlier this summer that charges against two of Wuterich's
co-defendants be dropped. The convening authority over
the case, Lt. Gen. James Mattis, concurred with Ware's recommendation in the
government's case against Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt. Last week, Ware also
recommended murder charges against Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum be dropped, a
recommendation Mattis has to rule upon. In his recommendation in the
Tatum case, Ware wrote that he did not find Mendoza's testimony credible,
basing that determination in part on varying versions of events the lance
corporal has given investigators. The Haditha killings
resulted in murder charges against four enlisted men and charges of
dereliction of duty against four officers. One of the enlisted men, Sgt.
Sanick Dela Cruz, later had the charges against him dropped in exchange for
his testimony. The four officers were
charged with dereliction of duty for allegedly failing to fully investigate
the incident. Charges against one of those officers, Capt. Randy Stone, have
been dropped while hearings for two others are pending. An investigatining officer
has recommended that the case of the battalion commander at Haditha, Col.
Jeffrey Chessani, go to trial by court-martial. Mattis has not yet ruled on
that recommendation. Wuterich's hearing was
recessed at noon and scheduled to resume in mid-afternoon. Shortly before it
did, Maj. Haytham Faraj, one of Wuterich's attorneys, asked Mendoza his
opinion of the man who led him at Haditha. "I think he is a great
Marine," Mendoza responded. External link: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/30/news/top_stories/1_01_418_29_07.txt |