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April 25th,
2008 - Soldier Admits Shooting Iraqi Man, but Calls it Justified News article by the Associated Press News article by the Honolulu
Star Bulletin |
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Soldier Admits Shooting
Iraqi Man, but Calls it Justified By Audrey McAvoy Associated Press April 25, 2008 Wheeler Army Airfield,
Hawaii - A Hawaii-based soldier accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi last year
admitted shooting the man, but said he believed it was justified after the
Iraqi tried to flee the backyard of a house the soldier's platoon had just
raided in search of insurgents. Sgt. 1st Class Trey
Corrales, who is being court-martialed for premeditated murder, said Thursday
that he told the man in Arabic to freeze and to put his hands in the air, but
the man started to run. Corrales, of San Antonio,
said he then raised his weapon and fired four shots at him. "I knew it was a
hostile area," Corrales told the nine-member panel serving on the
military justice system's equivalent of a jury. "I knew he couldn't be
up to anything good." He said he acted on
instinct. Corrales has also been
charged with wrongfully soliciting another soldier to shoot the Iraqi man and
with wrongfully obstructing an investigation by planting an AK-47 on the
victim. He has pleaded not guilty to all three charges. Prosecutors have argued
Corrales deliberately took the man from the house to its backyard after the
Iraqi's hands tested positive for explosives. They say Corrales told the man
to run and then shot him. The incident happened during
a late-night raid on a house near Kirkuk in northern Iraq that lasted until
the early hours of June 23. The Army hasn't been able to identify the man. Corrales' unit, the 3rd
Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, deployed to the region for 15 months
starting in the summer of 2006. Corrales acted as the leader for an elite
scout platoon tasked with reconnaissance and surveillance missions. He said he believed he acted
correctly in shooting the man, but acknowledged he was troubled afterward
when he learned the man was unarmed. "I knew it was a gray
area of the (rules of engagement), but if you're going to get into a fight
with someone and they don't fight back it doesn't feel too good inside,"
Corrales said. The sergeant also admitted
to threatening to kill the man earlier during interrogation inside the house. But he said he only did so
as a tactic to get the man to tell him where he had hidden AK-47s Corrales
believed had been used to fire at U.S. helicopters earlier in the day.
Corrales said he didn't intend to follow through on the threat. He said he didn't know how
the man managed to get to the backyard after he questioned him. A Honolulu-based forensic
psychologist called by the defense, Marvin Acklin, said that at the time of
the shooting Corrales was worried an insurgent might still have been in the
backyard. He said the sergeant also
expected a hostile confrontation as the platoon raided the house. With that in mind, Acklin
said he believed Corrales "acted appropriately according to his training
in response to a situation as he understood it." Earlier Thursday, an Iraqi
interpreter for the platoon testified that Corrales called him out of the
house to the backyard where he was standing with the Iraqi man. Essa Ahmed, who flew to
Hawaii for the court-martial, said Corrales asked him for the Arabic word for
"run." When Ahmed told Corrales it
was "orkuth," the sergeant repeated it to the man, prompting the
man to say: "Why, Mister? Why, Mister?" Ahmed said he went back
inside the house and then heard four shots fired. The court recessed after the
defense and prosecution finished calling their witnesses Thursday. Closing
arguments were set for Friday. Copyright © 2008 The
Associated Press. External link: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jzuwkhrcOZ-H5K2HgCBMz-ICJ0nwD908NTN00 Accused
soldier gives his version of killing Sgt. Trey Corrales said he shot an Iraqi who was disobeying his
command to “freeze” By Gregg K. Kakesako Honolulu Star Bulletin April 25, 2008 A decorated Schofield
Barracks soldier denied murdering an unarmed, suspected Iraqi insurgent
during a raid in June yesterday and said he never ordered a fellow soldier to
finish him off. During the second day of his
court-martial, Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales of San Antonio spent more than
three hours on the witness stand, where he emotionally contradicted earlier
testimony from fellow members of his 25th Infantry Division elite scout
platoon, his unit's Iraqi interpreter and criminal investigators who took
Corrales' statement. Only two witnesses testified
for Corrales before the defense rested its case last night. Closing arguments
were slated for this morning, with the case going to a nine-member military
jury sometime today. At one time during his
testimony, presiding judge Col. Donna Wright gave Corrales a tissue to wipe
his tears. Under cross-examination by Army
prosecutor Capt. Laura O'Donnell, Corrales said three times, "I did
not" - when asked whether his shooting of the Iraqi detainee was
illegal, whether he told the interpreter to bring an AK-47 rifle and put it
next to the body and whether he told Pvt. Christopher Shore to shoot the
wounded Iraqi. On Monday, Corrales, 35,
pleaded not guilty to charges of premeditated murder, solicitation and
obstruction of justice. A conviction could mean a maximum sentence of life in
jail without parole. Corrales acknowledged
shooting the detainee, whom he said he had been interrogating minutes earlier
in a house in the village of Al Shaheed where suspected bomb makers had taken
refuge. But under questioning,
Corrales could not say how the Iraqi was able to escape from the 16 members
of his platoon, which had taken control of the house. Corrales' version of the
June 22 raid was that he was interrupted while interviewing the suspected
insurgents by Lt. Col. Michael Browder, his battalion commander, who asked
him whether the back yard was secure. Corrales said when he
stepped into the back yard, he surprised the victim and told him in Arabic
"to freeze and put your hands in the air." When the Iraqi started
toward him, Corrales said he fired four shots. That was followed by two shots
which he said were fired by Shore. Browder had testified that
he asked Corrales to do the search because earlier reports had indicated
"movement" in the area. However, Sgt. 1st Class John
Thompson, who monitored the entire operation from the battalion's tactical
operations center at Forward Operating Base Warrior near Kirkuk, said he does
not recall seeing any movement before the shooting. Thompson said that to
prepare for the court-martial, he reviewed 12 minutes of aerial videotape of
the more-than-eight-hour operation. The video was recorded by unmanned drones
and manned surveillance aircraft. Essa Ahmed, an interpreter
assigned to Corrales' platoon, said Corrales ordered a blindfold and
flexicuffs removed from the Iraqi suspect before he took him from the house
into the back yard. But Corrales said on the stand that none of the detainees
was blindfolded or flexicuffed. Ahmed testified that
Corrales ordered him to take an AK-47 rifle that the unit maintained as a
training device and give it to the Iraqi detainee. Unable to get the
insurgent to run, Corrales asked Ahmed the Arabic word for run and then
repeated it, "Orkuth." For the first time, details
of the June 22 raid, which began at about 4 p.m., were disclosed by Browder,
who said it had been planned for several weeks. Browder said he knew where
insurgents had planted a homemade bomb along a road leading to Al Shaheed in
northern Iraq and had kept it under surveillance. When a car carrying four
suspected Iraqi insurgents approached the bomb to place a detonator, he
ordered his artillery to fire several rounds, which would burst in the air,
hitting the area with shrapnel. However, the shelling missed
the insurgents' vehicle, so Browder then called in a OH-58 Kiowa helicopter to
try to destroy the vehicle. On its first gun run, the
Kiowa missed, and the insurgents jumped out of the car and fired at the
helicopter. The helicopter on its second pass used a Hellfire missile that
blew up the vehicle but also killed two children and wounded two teenage
Iraqis. The insurgents then took
refuge in the house, which Browder's soldiers raided just before 1 a.m. External link: http://starbulletin.com/2008/04/25/news/story09.html Soldier was
‘fired up’ before fatal shooting By William Cole The Honolulu Advertiser April 25, 2008 Wheeler Army Airfield - Army
Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales took the witness stand yesterday at his murder
court-martial and admitted he shot an Iraqi during a nighttime raid near
Kirkuk last June. "I pick up my weapon.
Pop, pop, pop, pop. Four times," Corrales told a military jury. He admitted that the man
turned out to be unarmed. But the 35-year-old
Schofield Barracks soldier also said he believed it was not an unlawful
killing, though it fell into a "gray area" of U.S. troops' rules of
engagement. Two days of testimony
wrapped up last night at the Wheeler courthouse. If convicted of premeditated
murder by the jury of five enlisted soldiers and four officers, Corrales
faces a maximum of life in prison without parole. The 14-year soldier and
father of three is charged with premeditated murder, wrongfully soliciting
another soldier to murder an unarmed wounded Iraqi who previously had been
shot by Corrales and wrongfully impeding an investigation by causing an AK-47
rifle to be placed near the victim after he had been shot. A second Schofield soldier,
Pvt. Christopher Shore, 26, of Winder, Ga., was convicted in February of aggravated
assault after being accused of shooting the Iraqi man upon being ordered to
do so by Corrales. Corrales yesterday spoke
animatedly and in detail. He acknowledged that just before the June 23
shooting, during a time when a group of Iraqis was rounded up in the house,
he said he would kill the next detainee who turned up positive on a residue
test for explosives. Corrales said he was
"pretty fired up" at the time, and was shaking a man, demanding to
know where weapons were kept. He said he had told the Iraqi he would kill him
as a tactic to get information about weapons. "I'm going to kill your
motherf------ ass," Corrales said he told the man, adding he pushed the
man's face to the ground. The Iraqi smiled and spit at
him during questioning, Corrales said. Corrales admitted hanging an
AK-47 rifle around the man's neck, one of two he interrogated. One of those men -
identified yesterday as Saliah Khatab Aswad - was shot a short time later
outside. Corrales said the man he
would later shoot had somehow escaped from the house guarded by 16 to 18 U.S.
soldiers, although Corrales added he didn't immediately realize that. All Corrales said he knew
was that he encountered an Iraqi in the backyard of the house about 1 a.m. The San Antonio man said he
told the Iraqi in Arabic to "freeze," the "guy did kind of
like a jump because I startled him," and Corrales shot him. But while the prosecution
said Corrales' actions added up to premeditated murder, Corrales said he was
doing his job as he had been trained. "I shot him - but not
in an unlawful way, I don't feel or believe," Corrales said. Subsequently, Corrales said
he knew the shooting "was in the gray area of the rules of
engagement" for U.S. forces. His attorney, Frank Spinner,
earlier in the trial said Corrales acted "reflexively," worrying
that a weapon could be near at hand. The nine hours preceding the
shooting had pitted an array of American forces against insurgents spotted
planting roadside bombs. OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters
had fired machine guns and Hellfire missiles at a car earlier identified as
carrying insurgents, and even though the car blew up, several individuals
were seen running into the house that Corrales and his scout platoon later
raided. A parade of fellow soldiers
who had been in the scout platoon had testified on Wednesday that Corrales
more than once had said he wanted them to kill all fighting-age males on the
raid. Several said Corrales pushed
the detainee out of the house. One soldier, Spc. Franklin Hambrick, said the
Iraqi whom Corrales shot had his hands up, was confused, and was wondering
what was going on. Hambrick said he turned his
head as Corrales raised his M-4 at the Iraqi, then Hambrick heard three to
six shots. Corrales yesterday said
Hambrick was lying or mistaken. Fellow soldiers also
testified that the house, backyard and roof of the house had been cleared. No
shots were fired during the entry and no weapons were found. Shore, the soldier who was
accused of shooting the Iraqi along with Corrales, said Corrales ordered him
to "finish" the Iraqi after Corrales had shot him. Shore said he
intentionally missed the man. Corrales yesterday denied
giving that order, but said Shore fired two shots after Corrales shot the
Iraqi. Shore in February was found
guilty of aggravated assault. A military official previously said the Iraqi
had five gunshots: one in each arm, one in the back, and two in the face. He
died about two days later. The raid had culminated a
cat and mouse game with insurgents who had been spotted by aerial
surveillance about eight hours earlier working on a roadside bomb. Lt. Col. Michael Browder, at
the time the commander of the 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry that Corrales
belonged to, yesterday said artillery was fired at the insurgents, but
missed. The insurgents fled in a car
but were intercepted in the village of al Saheed by OH-58D Kiowa Warrior
helicopters, which fired machine guns at the car, Browder said. The insurgents bailed out before
a Hellfire missile destroyed the car, and several were seen entering the
house that was later raided. Browder said the plan was to
"shoot a Hellfire missile into the front door," but the helicopters
took fire, and a Hellfire missile that was fired down a street killed two
children ages 5 and 7 and wounded two teens. Browder said he saw more
people come and go from the house and he opted against a missile or bomb
strike. Corrales, who led 19 other
soldiers on the raid that night, likened it to the "Super Bowl" of
missions, and said to motivate his soldiers, he told them, "We were
going to go in there and kill these motherf-------." But Corrales likened the
talk to a football coach telling his players to rip the heads off opponents. Asked what Browder had said,
Corrales replied that the insurgents had been positively identified, and that
Browder wanted "to destroy these guys." Browder was relieved of
command in Iraq, and testified yesterday under a grant of immunity. An Iraqi interpreter, Essa
Ahmed, who was on the mission that day, was flown in from Iraq to testify at
Corrales' trial. The interpreter said none of
the soldiers in the house went outside to look after hearing the shots,
implying that they knew what was happening. "Everyone was like
shocked," he said. External link: http://tinyurl.com/6bzdwx |