Name not reported
November 19, 2005
Haditha, Iraq
Houston Chronicle
Houston, Texas
Jan. 6, 2007
Eyewitnesses paint scene of madness and mayhem
NCIS report says survivors told of Marines killing 24 civilians in 2005
By JOSH WHITE
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — U.S. Marines gunned down five unarmed Iraqis who stumbled onto the scene of a 2005 roadside bombing in Haditha, Iraq, according to eyewitness accounts that are part of a lengthy investigative report obtained by the Washington Post.
Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the squad's leader, shot the men one by one after Marines ordered them out of a white taxi in the moments following the explosion, which killed one Marine and injured two others, witnesses told investigators. Another Marine fired rounds into their bodies as they lay on the ground.
"The taxi's five occupants exited the vehicle and according to U.S. and Iraqi witnesses, were shot by Wuterich as they stood, unarmed, next to the vehicle approximately ten feet in front of him," said a report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on the incident that runs thousands of pages.
One of the witnesses, Sgt. Asad Amer Mashoot, a 26-year-old Iraqi soldier who was in the Marine convoy, told investigators he watched in horror as the four students and the taxi driver fell. "They didn't even try to run away," he said. "We were afraid from Marines and we saw them behaving like crazy. They were yelling and screaming."
The shootings were the first in a series of violent reactions by Marines on the morning of Nov. 19, 2005, that left 24 civilians — many of them women and children — dead, in what some human rights groups and Iraqis have called a massacre.
The report, which relied on hundreds of interviews with Marines, Iraqi soldiers and civilian survivors conducted months after the incident, presents a fragmented and sometimes conflicting chronicle of the violence that day. But taken together, the accounts provide evidence that as the Marines came under attack, they responded in ways that are difficult to reconcile with their rules of engagement.
Four Marines were charged with murder last month in connection with the civilian deaths in Haditha: Wuterich, who faces 13 counts of unpremeditated murder; Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz; Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt; and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Each faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
Through their lawyers, three have argued that they behaved appropriately while taking fire on a chaotic battlefield, and that the civilian deaths were a regrettable but unavoidable part of warfare in an especially dangerous area. Dela Cruz's attorney has declined to comment.
The Marine Corps also has charged four officers with failing to investigate and fully report the slayings: Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, Capt. Lucas M. McConnell, Capt. Randy W. Stone and Lt. Andrew A. Grayson.
Houses seen as 'hostile'
The Marines told investigators that they believed they were authorized to fire freely inside two houses they raided in the minutes following the taxi shootings, after concluding that insurgents were firing on them. After an officer ordered them to "take" one of the homes and Wuterich commanded them to "shoot first, ask questions later," the Marines considered the houses "hostile," according to sworn statements to investigators.
Marine officials have accused the troops of failing to identify their targets before using grenades and guns to kill 14 unarmed people in the houses, including several young children in their pajamas, in a span of about 10 minutes, according to the documents.
Safah Yunis Salem, 13, who said she played dead to avoid being shot, was the only person to survive the Marine attack on the second house. Her sister Aisha, 3, was shot in the leg and died; her brother Zainab, 5, was killed by a shot to the head. She said she lost five other members of her family in the room, including her mother.
"He fired and killed everybody," Safah said. "The American fired and killed everybody."
Numerous Marine officers in the chain of command in Iraq — including a major general — knew about the civilian deaths almost immediately but did not launch an investigation for months, according to interview transcripts. Some lower-level officers did not believe that the Marines had done anything inappropriate, while high-ranking officers had limited information about the incident and did not inquire further.
Neal Puckett, one of Wuterich's attorneys, declined to comment on the case Friday, saying he is "deeply disturbed that any media have access to what sounds like the entire investigation."
But Wuterich told investigators in a February interview, "I want to make clear that we did not go in intentionally to spray everyone we saw. We were taking fire."
Marine Corps and NCIS officials declined to comment on details of the case because it is ongoing.
NPR
January 2007
Official: Evidence Doesn't Back Marines
from The Associated Press
WASHINGTON January 6, 2007, 8:37 p.m. ET · U.S. criminal investigators found no evidence to support the claim of Marines charged in the deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians that five were shot after trying to flee the scene of a roadside bombing that killed one Marine, a senior defense official said Saturday.
Investigators determined that all five Iraqis were shot within arm's length of each other and no more than 18 feet from the white taxi they were ordered to exit by members of a Marine squad in the western Iraqi town of Haditha, said the official, who is familiar with reports produced by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the killings on Nov. 19, 2005.
Two Marines are charged with murder in the five deaths. They are Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich and Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz.
Two other Marines -- Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum -- face murder charges in connection with the deaths of other Iraqi civilians shot shortly after the killings by the taxi.
Through his lawyers, Wuterich has claimed he acted appropriately and within military rules governing the use of deadly force in combat.
Mark Zaid, an attorney for Wuterich, said in an interview Saturday he was highly disappointed that information from the government's investigative report on Haditha had been leaked to the media. He called it an effort by unidentified Pentagon officials to "portray a negative slant of these Marines."
Tatum's attorney, Jack Zimmerman, said he got the report the day after Christmas and has not "even begun to crack it." He called disclosure of details from the report a "serious, serious violation" and said he may ask the military to investigate the source of the leak.
Attempts on Saturday to reach lawyers for DelaCruz and Sharratt were unsuccessful.
Dela Cruz told investigators he fired bullets into the five bodies as they lay on the ground and that he later urinated on one, the defense official said.
These details about the deaths were first reported in Saturday's Washington Post, which said it obtained a copy of a lengthy government investigative report. The Post published photos from the investigative file that had not previously been made public; one shows the five Iraqis sprawled near the taxi.
One of the five may have been kneeling at the time he was shot, the defense official told The Associated Press.
In addition to the four Marines facing murder charges, four other Marines who were not at the scene were charged with dereliction of duty for failing to report or properly investigate the killings. In all, the case involves the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians.
The Haditha investigation is the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths so far in the Iraq war.
Members of an explosive ordnance disposal team that was summoned to the scene scoured the taxi and found no weapons or evidence of bomb-making materials, the defense official said. At least two, and possibly four, of the five Iraqis were students; the other was the taxi driver, who was taking the students to school.
The Marines claimed later that the five were attempting to flee and that they fit the profile of military-age men who, in the past, had acted as spotters for insurgents setting off roadside bombs. Zaid said Wuterich's position is that the five had disobeyed the Marines' orders, issued in Arabic, and were starting to flee. He said the report that they were up to 18 feet from the taxi supports Wuterich's position.
The NCIS investigators determined that the five had no apparent link to the bombing that morning in Haditha that shattered a Marine Humvee utility vehicle and killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas; two other Marines were injured.
The shooting of the men near the taxi was the first in a series of violence responses by the Marines, according to the NCIS investigation. The Marines subsequently raided four nearby houses, killing 18 unarmed civilians inside three of the residences. One other was shot dead outside. Among the dead were women and children.
The Marines were with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
After the deaths, the Marines announced that 15 civilians had been killed in Haditha from a roadside bombing and a Marine firefight with insurgents. The Marines said eight insurgents also were killed. The Marines have since acknowledged that that report was false.
The matter, involving an unusually large number of civilian casualties, was not investigated by the military until a Time magazine reporter inquired about the deaths in January 2006.
The military launched the first phase of its investigation in February, and in March it began a separate administrative probe focusing on how the matter was reported in official Marine Corps channels and whether there was an attempted cover-up. On the basis of that investigation, four Marines were charged with dereliction of duty.
The NCIS began its probe in March and it grew into the agency's largest criminal investigation in years.
One worry of military prosecutors is that American investigators failed to persuade the families of the any of the 24 dead to permit their bodies to be exhumed and examined to obtain forensic evidence.
The NCIS had hoped to gain access to the bodies so they could, for example, compare wounds on the bodies to the blood stain patterns at the scene and to other evidence and witness statements.
U.S. government officials went so far as to propose through the Iraqi government in Baghdad last year that a nongovernment humanitarian organization with medical credentials be permitted to exhume and examine the 24 bodies, but the families rejected that approach.
------Associated Press Writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
A photo contained in a Naval Criminal Investigative Service report obtained by The Washington Post shows a Marine inspecting a roadside scene near Haditha, Iraq, where five unarmed civilians were killed Nov. 19, 2005. Earlier that day, Marines stopped the white taxi in which the men had been riding, then allegedly shot them after a bomb exploded nearby. The incident was the first on a day of violence in Haditha that left 24 civilians dead, among them women and children. Four Marines have been charged with murder. Associated Press Copyright 2007
VOA News
06 January 2007
US Investigation Reveals New Details of Civilian Deaths in Haditha
By VOA News
A published report on the killing of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha in 2005 says witnesses saw the troops pull five unarmed Iraqis from a passing taxi and shoot them dead at point-blank range.
The report obtained by The Washington Post newspaper reveals previously undisclosed details about the incident in Haditha. That incident occurred shortly after a roadside bomb killed one Marine and wounded two others.
According to the Post article, an Iraqi soldier at the scene told U.S. military investigators the Marines were acting crazy leading up to the incident.
The shootings were the first of several violent reactions attributed to U.S. Marines that day, leaving 24 Iraqi civilians dead in Haditha. Many of those killed were women and children.
Last month, the squad leader and three other Marines were charged with murder in connection with the civilian deaths.
The newspaper says the U.S. military report includes hundreds of witness interviews, including those with U.S. Marines, Iraqi soldiers and civilian survivors.
The Post says the investigation report contains conflicting testimony about the killings, but provides evidence the Marines did not respond to the roadside bomb attack of their comrades within U.S. military rules of engagement.
If convicted, the four Marines charged with murder face possible life in prison.
Defense attorneys say the Marines behaved appropriately in a chaotic battlefield situation.
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