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September 24th,
2007 - U.S. Aims To Lure Insurgents With ‘Bait’ News article by the Washington Post |
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U.S. Aims To Lure Insurgents
With ‘Bait’ Snipers Describe Classified Program By Josh White and Joshua Partlow Washington Post September 24, 2007 A Pentagon group has
encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents
by scattering pieces of "bait," such as detonation cords, plastic
explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items,
according to military court documents. The classified program was
described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges
against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they
killed. "Baiting is putting an
object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying
the enemy," Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout
platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in
a sworn statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it.
If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item,
we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the
item against U.S. Forces." In documents obtained by The
Washington Post from family members of the accused soldiers, Didier said
members of the U.S. military's Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in
January and later passed along ammunition boxes filled with the "drop
items" to be used "to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts
at harming Coalition Forces and give us the upper hand in a fight." Eugene Fidell, president of
the National Institute of Military Justice, said such a baiting program
should be examined "quite meticulously" because it raises troubling
possibilities, such as what happens when civilians pick up the items. "In a country that is
awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time
somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you
might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back,"
Fidell said. Soldiers said that about a
dozen platoon members were aware of the program, and that numerous others
knew about the "drop items" but did not know their purpose. Two
soldiers who had not been officially informed about the program came forward
with allegations of wrongdoing after they learned they were going to be
punished for falling asleep on a sniper mission, according to the documents. Army officials declined to
discuss the classified program, details of which appear in unclassified
investigative documents and in transcripts of court testimony. Criminal
investigators wrote that they found materials related to the program in a
white cardboard box and an ammunition can at the sniper unit's base. "We don't discuss
specific methods targeting enemy combatants," said Paul Boyce, an Army
spokesman. "The accused are charged with murder and wrongfully placing
weapons on the remains of Iraqi nationals. There are no classified programs
that authorize the murder of local nationals and the use of 'drop weapons' to
make killings appear legally justified." It is unclear whether the
program reached elsewhere in Iraq and how many people were killed through the
baiting tactics. Members of the sniper
platoon have said they felt pressure from commanders to kill more insurgents
because U.S. units in the area had taken heavy losses. The sniper unit -
dubbed "the painted demons" because of the use of tiger-stripe face
paint - often went on missions into hostile areas to intercept insurgents going
to and from hidden weapons caches. "It's our job out here
to lay people down who are doing bad things," Spec. Joshua L. Michaud
testified in Iraq in July, discussing the unit's numerous casualties. "I
don't want to call it revenge, but we needed to find a way so that we could
get the bad guys the right way and still maintain the right military things
to do." Within months of the
program's introduction, three snipers in Didier's platoon were charged with
murder for allegedly using those items and others to make shootings seem
legitimate. Though it does not appear that the three alleged shootings were
specifically part of the classified program, defense attorneys argue that the
program may have opened the door to the soldiers' actions because it blurred
the legal lines of killing in a complex war zone. James D. Culp, a civilian
attorney for one of the snipers, Sgt. Evan Vela, said the soldiers became
"battle-fatigued pawns in a newfangled concept of 'baiting' warfare
that, like an onion, perhaps looked good on the surface, but started stinking
to high hell the minute the layers were pulled back and scrutinized." Spec. Jorge Sandoval and
Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley are accused by the military of placing a spool of
wire into the pocket of an Iraqi man Sandoval had shot on April 27 on
Hensley's order. The man had been cutting grass with a rusty sickle when he
was shot, according to court documents. The military alleges that
the killing of the man carrying the sickle was inappropriate. Hensley and
Sandoval have been charged with murder and with planting evidence. As Sandoval and Hensley
approached the corpse, according to testimony and court documents, they
allegedly placed a spool of wire, often used by insurgents to detonate
roadside bombs, into the man's pocket in an attempt to make the case for the
kill ironclad. One soldier who came forward
with the allegations, Pfc. David C. Petta, told the same court that he
believed the classified items were for dropping on people the unit had
killed, "to enforce if we killed somebody that we knew was a bad guy but
we didn't have the evidence to show for it." Petta had not been
officially briefed about the program. Two weeks after that
killing, Sandoval and his sniper team stopped for the night in a concealed
"hide" in the village of Jurf as Sakhr along the Euphrates River.
While other snipers slept, Hensley watched as an Iraqi man, Genei Nesir
Khudair, slowly approached the hide. He radioed to Didier, then a first
lieutenant, for permission to go for a "close kill." "I told him that as the
ground forces commander, I would authorize that if it was necessary,"
Didier testified. "And about five minutes later, he told me that he had
indeed killed the individual." The U.S. military alleges
that Vela, on Hensley's order, shot the Iraqi man twice in the head with a
9mm pistol after he had been taken into custody. It was Vela's first kill,
and he was visibly shaken. "He looked weird," Sgt. Robert Redfern
testified. "Just messed up from it. How would you feel if you had to
shoot someone?" At the time the two shots
rang out, Sandoval was on guard duty about 20 meters away, out of sight of
Vela, inside a broken-down pump house along the Euphrates River, soldiers
testified. Vela and Hensley told
investigators that the man had an AK-47 with him and that he posed a threat,
but other soldiers have alleged that the AK-47 was planted next to Khudair
after he was shot. Hensley's attorney could not
be reached to comment. Sandoval's attorney, Capt. Craig Drummond, thinks his
client is innocent in both deaths. "Literally, they have
charged this guy with two murders when on both occasions he was just doing
his job," Drummond said. Drummond said Sandoval did
not have anything to do with placing an AK-47 in the pump-house killing.
Sandoval made a statement to investigators discussing his involvement in
planting the command wire on the first victim. "That was done by one
of the soldiers at the scene basically out of stupidity. The guys were trying
to ensure that there were no questions at all about this kill," Drummond
said. "It was done to overly justify a kill that didn't need
justification." Hensley is also charged with
killing an Iraqi man whom he approached after the sniper team noticed the man
placing wires on a road. Hensley shot him outside his home, maintaining that
the man appeared to be moving for a weapon. Two and a half months after
the shooting near the pump house, authorities seized Sandoval while he was
vacationing at his mother's house in Laredo, Tex. The charges have baffled
family members, who describe Sandoval as a caring and honest young man who is
being punished for following orders. "This has been a shock
to all of us," said his eldest sister, Norma Vasquez. "He's been in
shock, too, he doesn't know what ... is going on." Sandoval, a former high
school ROTC member, is scheduled to face a court-martial in Baghdad on
Wednesday. Vela's father, Curtis
Carnahan, said he thinks the military is rushing the cases and is holding the
proceedings in a war zone to shield facts from the U.S. public. "It's an injustice that
is being done to them," Carnahan said. "I feel like you can't
prosecute our soldiers for acts of war and threaten them with years and years
of confinement when this program, if it comes to the light of day, was clearly
coming from higher levels. ... All those people who said 'go use this stuff'
just disappeared, like they never sanctioned it." Partlow reported from
Baghdad. Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report. External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/23/AR2007092301431.html |