Four United States marines were on Thursday night charged with murder and a further four with failure to investigate and report the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians, in the biggest US criminal case to arise from the Iraq war.
The eight include Frank Wuterich (26) who was charged with the murder of 18 Iraqi civilians in the episode that has come to be known as the Iraq war’s My Lai — a reference to the notorious massacre of civilians in the Vietnam war.
Staff Sergeant Wuterich, who commanded a squad of marines near the town of Haditha in November last year, faces 12 counts of murder and one of ordering the troops under his charge to ”shoot first, ask questions later” when they cleared a house, killing six people inside it.
The men all belonged to Kilo Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marines Regiment based at Camp Pendleton, California.
Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz was accused of the unpremeditated murder of five people and making a false official statement; Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt was accused of the murder of three Iraqis; and Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum was charged with the murder of two Iraqis and the negligent homicide of four other civilians.
None of the charges includes premeditated murder, and the maximum sentence for any of the men would be life in prison. All the accused will remain free until the trial.
The Haditha killings have emerged as the deadliest single incident of suspected war crimes in the Iraq conflict. Nineteen Iraqis, including women, a man in a wheelchair and children as young as two years old, were shot dead or blown up by grenades on November 19 2005 by marines going house to house after one of their own was killed by a roadside bomb.
Another five Iraqis were shot dead in a taxi. Even after the shock of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and a spate of incidents involving the deaths of Iraqis under interrogation, the allegations from Haditha have been treated with particular seriousness by the military and human rights organisations because of the evidence of a cover-up.
In an initial report and ensuing press release, the Marine Corps claimed that more than a dozen of the Iraqis had been killed in the blast that killed one of its troops and wounded two others, and that the others were insurgents shot dead in the ensuing fighting in a town known as a centre of Sunni militant activity.
At a press conference on Thursday, Colonel Stewart Navarre said: ”We now know with certainty the press release was incorrect and that none of the civilians were killed by the IED [insurgents’] explosion.”
The investigation was prompted after video footage of the killings captured by an Iraqi journalist, and subsequently obtained by Time magazine, showed the corpses of women and children with gunshot wounds to the head. Survivors of the attack, including a young girl, also described the episode in gruesome detail.
Several official inquiries were opened last spring and military officials concluded that the marines had opened fire indiscriminately on civilians.
The four other accused face lesser charges relating to dereliction of duty to report and investigate suspected violations of the law of armed conflict.
The four are Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, First Lieutenant Andrew Grayson, Captain Lucas McConnell and Captain Randy Stone. The accounts of what happened that day at Haditha, and the attempt by the marines at a cover-up, helped turn domestic opinion against a continued presence in Iraq. – Guardian Unlimited Â