American soldiers have been cleared of deliberately killing Iraqi civilians in one of several incidents that have raised questions about the conduct of the occupying force, it emerged on Friday. But United States marines still face murder charges for two other incidents.
According to defence officials quoted on Friday night, a military investigation has cleared troops involved in the March raid on Ishaqi, 96km north of Baghdad, in which women and children were killed.
The BBC broadcast footage from Ishaqi apparently questioning the American version of events, which contended that four people were killed when US troops raided a house in pursuit of an al-Qaeda suspect. Iraqi police say 11 people, including four children, were executed and the house subsequently demolished.
According to Friday’s reports, the troops were found to have followed normal operating procedures in using force in approaching the house.
US forces in Iraq still face scrutiny for the actions of marines in two other incidents in which civilians were killed. Defence lawyers for US marines being held at Camp Pendleton, California, said seven marines and one sailor are facing possible murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges over the death of an Iraqi man in the Baghdad suburb of Hamandiyah on April 26. According to media reports, the victim was dragged from his house and shot and a gun was planted on the body.
Meanwhile, navy investigators were reported to be planning to exhume the victims of an alleged massacre in Haditha, north-western Iraq, last November, to examine claims that the 24 dead people had been shot at close range by a marine unit on the rampage after the death of one its own.
A separate army investigation into a possible cover-up of the Haditha incident was due to have been completed on Friday, but a marine officer said the findings might be withheld until the criminal inquiry is completed.
In the fourth case known to be under investigation, a pregnant woman in labour and her cousin were killed by gunfire in Samarra on Tuesday when their car failed to stop at a US checkpoint on their way to hospital.
All US troops in Iraq will have to attend a workshop on battlefield ethics this month, but the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said on Friday the killings of civilians do not represent a pattern. ”We know that 99,9% of our forces conduct themselves in an exemplary manner. We also know that in conflicts things that shouldn’t happen do happen,” Rumsfeld said at a defence ministers’ conference in Singapore.
Brigadier General Donald Campbell, chief of staff at the US military headquarters in Baghdad, said there are conditions under which troops ”could snap”.
”When you’re in a combat theatre dealing with enemy combatants who don’t abide by the law of war, who do acts of indecency, soldiers become stressed, they become fearful,” Campbell said.
The episodes have been sharply criticised by the Iraqi government. Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, said his government is losing patience with reports of civilian deaths at the hands of coalition forces. ”There is a limit to the acceptable excuses,” he said. ”Yes, a mistake may happen, but there is an acceptable limit to mistakes.”
Al-Maliki suggested that the civilian deaths will be a factor in future talks on the presence of foreign troops in Iraq. The Iraqi government will mount its own investigation into the Haditha incident, he said, and asked for US files on the case to be handed over. Campbell said his forces will cooperate. But a verdict could take weeks.
The naval criminal-investigation service, which is leading the Haditha criminal inquiry, has said it began its work only in March, four months after the event, and much of the forensic evidence has been destroyed.
The exhumation of bodies and their examination might fill some of the forensic gaps, but will prolong the investigation into the summer. — Guardian Unlimited Â