Colin Freeman
London
Telegraph
Sunday, January 7, 2007
The criminal inquiry into the massacre of civilians by US Marines
in the Iraqi town of Haditha has unearthed chilling new evidence
of how troops ordered five men out of a taxi and shot them one
by one at near-point blank range.
A leaked copy of the probe into the incident – the most
serious case of alleged US misconduct in the Iraq war so far –
quotes a horrified witness saying that the marines went "crazy"
after a roadside bomb killed one of their squad and injured two
others.
They appear to have taken revenge on the occupants of a white
taxi which arrived on the scene shortly afterwards. The report
describes how, after telling them to get out of the vehicle, the
Marines' squad leader, Staff Sgt Frank D Wuterich, opened fire
on the Iraqis with his M16 rifle from a distance of no more than
10ft, despite the fact that some of them had their hands up. The
men, standing in a line, dropped to the ground as an Iraqi soldier
attached to the marines unit looked on in horror.
Sgt Asad Amer Mashoot, who later gave evidence to the inquiry
conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said in
his statement: "They didn't even try to run away. We were
afraid from the marines and we saw them behaving like crazy. They
were yelling and screaming."
Another marine at the scene, Sgt Sanick P Dela Cruz, tells the
inquiry how he then fired additional shots into the dead men as
they lay on the ground. In an additional mark of disrespect, the
report said, he later urinated on one of the corpses.
advertisementBoth Sgt Dela Cruz and Staff Sgt Wuterich have been
charged with murder, along with L/Cpl Justin L Sharratt and L/Cpl
Stephen B Tatum. All face life imprisonment if found guilty.
The men in the taxi were among a total of 24 Iraqis killed by
the marines in the wake of a bomb attack on their convoy as it
drove through Haditha, an insurgent-plagued town in the western
Iraqi desert, on the morning of November 19, 2005.
Despite claims by locals that the troops went on the rampage,
hurling grenades into nearby houses and killing women and children,
the marine squad's commanders failed to launch any inquiry until
prompted by a Time magazine report into the incident some two
months later. Four senior officers, not present at the incident,
have been charged over their alleged failure to investigate and
report the deaths properly.
The scale of the killings sparked horror in America and drew
comparisons with the 1968 My Lai massacre, which dramatically
reduced support for the American military campaign in Vietnam.
Nonetheless, while some of the testimony to the inquiry paints
a grim picture of troops virtually running amok, much of it backs
up the marines' claim that they came under sustained fire after
the bombing and were responding to immediate threats to life.
Several marines testified that as they tried to help their injured
colleagues away from the wreckage of a bombed-out Humvee, they
came under fire from several gunmen on either side of the road,
some using local houses as sniping points.
At the first house they then stormed, Staff Sgt Wuterich told
his men to "treat it as a hostile environment", giving
the order: "Shoot first, ask questions later". L/Cpl
Tatum then heard what he believed was an AK47 rifle being cocked
in another room. He and his comrades then tossed in grenades and
"cleared" the rest of the house by rifle fire, only
to discover later that they had killed six members of a family,
including a four-year-old boy and his mother.
Among the survivors was the boy's sister, Eman Hamed, nine, who
later gave a harrowing account of the killings to the world's
media: "I couldn't see their faces very well – only
their guns sticking into the doorway," she said. "I
watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then
in the head. Then they killed my granny."
However, Sgt Mashoot, the Iraqi soldier who was with the marines,
told the inquiry that he felt that the attacks on the houses were
justified, and not acts of simple revenge. The report said he
believed the marines "had justification" for the raids
because they were "defending themselves".
Several of the marines later expressed regrets that innocent
civilians had been killed, but insisted that they had followed
the rules of engagement. "I fired because I had been told
the house was hostile and I was following my training that all
individuals in a hostile house are to be shot," said L/Cpl
Humberto M Mendoza. Staff Sgt Wuterich also told the inquiry:
"We did not go in intentionally to spray everyone we saw.
We were taking fire."
Attorneys acting for the marines have declined to comment on
the report, which runs into thousands of pages and was leaked
to yesterday's Washington Post.
When allegations about the killings at Haditha originally surfaced,
American marine commanders believed they were part of an insurgent
propaganda campaign to smear the soldiers' reputation. A subsequent
investigation by a senior US Army commander backed up the marines'
version of events, pointing out that they were in the middle of
a battlefield and that the troops had grounds for suspecting that
the men in the taxi were insurgents. It did, however, recommend
the separate probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service,
which began in March and led to murder charges last month.
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