History > 2007 > USA > Military justice (II)

Marine faces lesser charges

in Haditha killings

Mon Dec 31, 2007
3:53pm EST
Reuters
By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. Marine accused of leading his unit in killing 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005 will face voluntary manslaughter and other charges but not more serious murder charges, officials said on Monday.

Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich said in a September hearing he regretted the Iraqis' deaths which followed the explosion of a roadside bomb that killed a popular Marine, but he insisted he had acted properly to keep his men alive.

Marines claimed they were searching for hostile combatants when the killings occurred. The incident, one in a series in which U.S. forces were accused of violent crimes against Iraqis, caused international outrage. Many of the Haditha victims were women and children.

In a statement, Camp Pendleton in California said the commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Central, Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, decided that Wuterich would not face charges of unpremeditated murder of 17 Iraqis.

"The charges referred against SSgt Wuterich are voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice," the statement said. "Lt. Gen. Helland dismissed the charges of unpremeditated murder, soliciting another to commit an offense and false official statement."

Wuterich's lawyers viewed the reduction of charges as a partial victory and said they had requested a speedy trial.

"The good news is that SSgt Wuterich (and all of the Marines, for that matter), have been forever cleared of murder charges," attorney Neal Puckett said. "The bad news is that the extensive pretrial investigation and legal analysis conducted by an experienced military judge was essentially ignored."

"We are confident that a military jury will acquit SSgt Wuterich of all remaining charges, because he is, in fact, not guilty."

He faces a maximum penalty of more than 160 years in prison, according to Marine spokesman Lt. Col. Sean Gibson.

COMPLICATED BATTLE

In his September testimony, Wuterich described a complicated combat situation in hostile terrain that he said required lethal force.

"I will bear the memory of the events of that day forever and will always mourn the unfortunate deaths of the innocent Iraqis who were killed during our response to the attack," Wuterich said.

Eight Marines were originally charged in the highly publicized case in which Wuterich said he shot at five men standing near a car and then was among a squad that entered two homes and killed 19 others.

Since the initial charges, the cases against two officers and two enlisted men have been dismissed. The Marines previously announced that two others would face courts martial, and the Marines announced on Monday the cases against Wuterich and an officer would proceed.

In a separate statement, Helland said he had also referred charges against 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson for making false official statements, obstruction of justice and attempting to fraudulently separate from the Marine Corps. Another charge of dereliction of duty was dropped.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

    Marine faces lesser charges in Haditha killings, R, 31.12.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN3130936920071231

Factbox: The accused U.S. Marines in Haditha killings

Mon Dec 31, 2007
3:52pm EST
Reuters

(Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Monday it would go to trial in the case against the accused ringleader in the 2005 Haditha, Iraq killing of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians.

Here are details on the eight men originally charged, four of whom now face courts martial.

* STAFF SGT. FRANK WUTERICH - Charged on Monday with voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice.

The squad leader, Wuterich was an athletic honor-roll student in high school who played with the marching band and wore a military-style crew cut. He enlisted after his 1998 graduation from high school and was serving his second tour of duty in Iraq when the Haditha incident occurred.

Wuterich, who is married with three children, could face more than 160 years in prison if convicted.

* LANCE CPL. STEPHEN TATUM - Faces a late March trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter and aggravated assault. Other Marines have testified Tatum was among those who "cleared" two Iraqi homes, resulting in 19 deaths, including many women and children.

Another Marine testified Tatum told him to shoot a group of Iraqi women and children he found on a bed in a closed room. That Marine said he walked away but saw Tatum return and heard a loud noise, possibly gunfire or a grenade. Tatum faces up to 19 years in prison if convicted of all charges.

* LT. COL. JEFFREY CHESSANI - The highest-ranking U.S. Marine charged in the Haditha case, the former battalion commander faces an April court martial accused of dereliction of duty and violating a lawful order. He faces up to two and a half years in prison.

* FIRST LT. ANDREW GRAYSON - The second officer still facing charges, Grayson is slated for a future court martial for making false official statements, obstruction of justice and attempting to separate fraudulently from the Marine Corps.

* SGT. SANICK DELA CRUZ - Initially charged with unpremeditated murders, he was granted immunity from prosecution after agreeing to testify. Dela Cruz has admitted to urinating on the skull of one of the dead Iraqi men because he was upset about a well-liked Marine's death that day.

* LANCE CPL. JUSTIN SHARRATT - The original charges of unpremeditated murder were dropped.

* CAPT LUCAS McCONNELL - Originally charged with dereliction of duty, McConnell was granted immunity and said he would cooperate in the remaining Haditha prosecutions.

* CAPT. RANDY STONE - Charges of dereliction of duty have been dismissed.

(Reporting by Adam Tanner; editing by Todd Eastham)

    Factbox: The accused U.S. Marines in Haditha killings, 31.12.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN3158167220071231

Marine Inquiry Into Afghan Killings to Look at 2 Officers, Lawyer Says

October 21, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

A Marine Corps court of inquiry, scheduled to convene in November in the killings of at least a dozen Afghan civilians last March by a special operations platoon after its convoy was attacked, will focus only on the actions of two officers in charge, a defense lawyer said yesterday.

The two officers, Maj. Fred Galvin, the commander of F Company, Second Marine Special Operations Battalion, and Capt. Vincent Noble, the platoon leader and mission commander at the time, will be the only members of the elite unit to be called as official parties to the court of inquiry, said Lt. Col. Scott Jack, a lawyer for Major Galvin.

No marines have been charged with a crime in connection with the episode, in which at least a dozen apparently unarmed Afghan civilians were killed on March 4 by members of Captain Noble’s platoon in the minutes after a suicide bomber drove his vehicle into the convoy. No marines were seriously wounded in that attack.

Neither Major Galvin nor Captain Noble fired his weapon during the episode, Colonel Jack said yesterday in a telephone interview.

In early October, a Marine general authorized the court of inquiry, a rarely used type of formal inquisition created by the British military, to examine the civilian shootings by the marines, in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. A military inquiry last spring found that after the suicide bomb attack struck their convoy, the Marine platoon began rolling westbound and fired at people and vehicles along a seven-mile stretch of highway toward Jalalabad. Both the military investigation and a separate inquiry by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission found no evidence that the marines had been fired on.

Documents from the court of inquiry, led by a three-member panel of officers with combat experience, say the proceeding will examine “any failure or dereliction” by the two officers “relative to the tactical conduct and fire discipline” of platoon members, Colonel Jack said.

The court is scheduled to convene Nov. 1 at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

It will also examine whether the use of force “was consistent with the operations order and the rules of engagement in effect at the time, and the law of armed conflict and reflected sound military judgment,” Colonel Jack said, reading from court papers released to him and other lawyers late Friday.

In addition, the court plans to examine whether the two officers’ “leadership was consistent with the operations order and the principles of discriminate and proportional use of force,” Colonel Jack said, and whether the platoon and company commanders reported the incident properly.

Mark Waple, a civilian lawyer for Major Galvin, said his client and Captain Noble had done nothing wrong. “I’m very optimistic that even this court of inquiry will not result in any adverse action against either of these two Marine officers,” Mr. Waple said.

A civilian lawyer for Captain Noble did not immediately respond to e-mail and telephone messages yesterday morning.

Colonel Jack said that depending on the findings, marines who fired their weapons in the March episode could still face legal consequences, but that it was too soon to tell.

“There may be something that comes out of the inquiry that always implicates something,” he said.

    Marine Inquiry Into Afghan Killings to Look at 2 Officers, Lawyer Says, NYT, 21.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/world/asia/21marine.html

Courts - Martial for 2 in Haditha Deaths

October 20, 2007
Filed at 2:16 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- The highest-ranking U.S. serviceman to face court-martial involving combat since Vietnam was ordered to trial Friday for failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis, including women and children, in Haditha two years ago.

Another Marine was also ordered to face court-martial for charges including involuntary manslaughter.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani faces charges of dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order on allegations that he mishandled the aftermath of the Nov. 19, 2005, shootings, which followed a roadside bombing that killed a Marine driver.

Chessani was commander of the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment that has been the focus of the biggest prosecution of U.S. troops in the Iraq war.

He is the most senior U.S. serviceman since the Vietnam War to face a court-martial for actions or decisions made in combat, said Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps prosecutor and judge who teaches law of war at Georgetown University Law Center.

One of Chessani's men, Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, was ordered to face a court-martial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault. He is one of four Marines originally charged with murder in the killings.

The decision by Lt. Gen. James Mattis to send Tatum to court-martial comes after the investigating officer said last month that the evidence was too weak to prosecute him. But Tatum will not be tried on the murder count he originally faced.

Tatum, of Edmond, Okla., shot and killed civilians, but ''he did so because of his training and the circumstances he was placed in, not to exact revenge and commit murder,'' Lt. Col. Paul Ware wrote last month in recommending he not face court-martial.

Chessani's civilian defense attorney, Brian Rooney, told The Associated Press he was disappointed with the general's recommendation.

''I can tell you this decision by Gen. Mattis today is going to have a negative affect on all officers, including battalion commanders,'' he said, adding it would undermine the trust between commanders and their troops. ''Are they going to be able to trust the word of their junior officers, senior enlisted and junior enlisted?''

If convicted on all counts, Chessani faces up to three years in prison.

He is the second colonel to be court-martialed over actions in Iraq. Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan of Fredericksburg, Va., was convicted of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, said Tom Umberg, a retired Army colonel and former military prosecutor

The decision to send Chessani to trial mirrored the conclusion the hearing officer reached at his preliminary hearing. Col. Christopher Conlin said Chessani ''failed to thoroughly and accurately report and investigate a combat engagement that clearly needed scrutiny.''

In his report, Conlin, an infantry officer, blasted Chessani for failing to go to the scene of the November 2005 killings immediately after they had occurred, even though he knew 24 ''neutrals'' were dead.

''To not have made every attempt to be on scene as this action developed, or to not have at least reviewed this action in detail ... is in itself negligent,'' Conlin wrote. ''The fact that one fireteam was solely responsible for 24 deaths in all direct fire actions should have solicited more than passing interest from the senior leadership of the battalion.''

At Chessani's preliminary hearing, held in June at Camp Pendleton, several witnesses testified local Iraqis had complained to Chessani in the days after the killings and that he promised to look into what had happened.

But Chessani said he never ordered a formal investigation because he believed the deaths resulted from lawful combat.

Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, a spokesman for the Marine Corps at the U.S. Central Command, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan, said Chessani and Tatum will be arraigned on the charges and required to enter pleas. A date for those hearings has not been set.

    Courts - Martial for 2 in Haditha Deaths, NYT, 20.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Haditha.html

Soldier Denies Taking Part in Killing

October 19, 2007
Filed at 10:51 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WHEELER ARMY AIRFIELD, Hawaii (AP) -- A soldier accused of helping his platoon sergeant kill an unarmed Iraqi said he only faked his part of the shooting, intentionally missing the already-wounded man.

Spc. Christopher P. Shore testified Thursday that he fired shots -- but deliberately missed -- because he was afraid of openly disobeying the order his volatile and violent platoon sergeant had issued June 23 to ''finish'' the Iraqi.

Shore, 25, of Winder, Ga., testified at a hearing held to determine whether he should be tried on a premeditated murder charge.

He said Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales shot the man several times in the backyard of a house they had searched, then turned to him and told him to kill the man.

''I didn't know what to do. I just saw him shoot somebody,'' Shore said, explaining he was terrified of what Corrales might do to him if he refused to follow through.

After quickly mulling his options, Shore said, he fired two shots ''off to the side of his head.''

Army prosecutors allege the two soldiers, members of the Hawaii-based 3rd Brigade Combat Team in the 25th Infantry Division, killed the unidentified man. Their platoon had raided a house near Kirkuk in search of men they believed were planting roadside bombs.

Shore's hearing took only one day, instead of two as had been expected. A separate hearing for Corrales, who also denies the charge, is scheduled for Monday.

The hearings are similar in function to grand jury hearings in civilian courts. The presiding investigator will make recommendations to the division's commander, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, who will decide whether the cases will go to trial.

Capt. Duane Kees, the prosecutor, argued Shore's two shots hit the Iraqi man in the face, contributing to his death by multiple gunshot wounds. He said Shore shot the Iraqi ''to look good for Sergeant Corrales.''

But Shore's attorney, Michael Waddington, described Corrales, 34, of San Antonio, as moody and said he threatened to harm his men in the past. The defense had planned to call Corrales to testify, but he invoked his right against self-incrimination.

Platoon member Spc. Franklin Eugene Hambrick and other witnesses testified Corrales took the Iraqi man to the backyard of the house after learning he tested positive for having explosive residue on his hands.

Corrales had earlier declared he would kill the next person who tested positive, Hambrick and others testified.

Hambrick said Corrales told the man to run, after which the detainee, looking confused, walked backward. Hambrick said he left after seeing Corrales raise his weapon, not wanting to see what happened next, but did hear several shots.

''I was afraid of what was happening,'' he said.

The division recently returned to Hawaii after spending about 15 months in Iraq. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael Browder, was relieved of his command in connection with the case although he was not a suspect.

    Soldier Denies Taking Part in Killing, NYT, 19.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Soldiers-Charged.html

War-Crimes Prosecutor Quits in Pentagon Clash

October 6, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

In the latest disruption of the Bush administration’s plan to try detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for war crimes, the chief military prosecutor on the project stepped down yesterday after a dispute with a Pentagon official.

It was not clear what effect the departure would have on the problem-plagued effort to charge and try detainees.

The prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force, was to leave his position immediately, a Defense Department spokeswoman said. But the spokeswoman, Cynthia O. Smith, said officials were working to minimize interruption in the work of the prosecution office, which includes military lawyers supplemented by civilian federal prosecutors.

“The department is taking measures to ensure a prompt and orderly transition to another chief prosecutor without interrupting the key mission of prosecuting war crimes via military commissions,” Ms. Smith said.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Colonel Davis would resign.

The Pentagon’s system of prosecuting suspects has been beset by practical problems and legal disputes that have reached the Supreme Court. As a result, more than five years after the first terror suspects arrived at Guantánamo Bay, only one detainee’s war-crimes case has been completed, and that was through a plea agreement.

Prosecutors have said they might eventually file charges against as many as 80 of the 330 detainees being held at Guantánamo. Those include so-called high value detainees, 14 men the administration has said include dangerous terrorists who had previously been held in secret C.I.A. prisons.

Officials have said the prosecutors are working on charges against some of those men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has said he was the mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Colonel Davis, a career military lawyer, had been in a bitter dispute with Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, who was appointed this summer to a top post in the Pentagon Office of Military Commissions, which supervises the war crimes trial system.

General Hartmann, an Air Force reserve officer who worked as a corporate lawyer until recently, was appointed this summer as the legal adviser to Susan J. Crawford, a former military appeals judge who is the convening authority, a military official who has extensive powers under the military commission law passed by Congress in 2006.

Among other powers, under the law, the convening authority can approve or reject war-crimes charges, make plea deals with detainees and reduce sentences.

People involved in the prosecutions, who spoke on condition of anonymity, have said that General Hartmann challenged Colonel Davis’s authority in August and pressed the prosecutors who worked for Colonel Davis to produce new charges against detainees quickly.

They said he also pushed the prosecutors to frame cases with bold terrorism accusations that would draw public attention to the military commission process, which has been one of the central legal strategies of the Bush administration. In some cases the prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty.

Through a spokeswoman, General Hartmann declined comment yesterday.

Colonel Davis filed a complaint against General Hartmann with Pentagon officials this fall saying that the general had exceeded his authority and created a conflict of interest by asserting control over the prosecutor’s office. Colonel Davis said it would be improper for General Hartmann to assess the adequacy of cases filed by prosecutors if the general had been involved in the decision to file those cases.

In a statement last week, Colonel Davis said the issue posed a threat to the integrity of the war-crimes process. “For the greater good, Brigadier General Hartmann and I should both resign and walk away or higher authority should relieve us of our duties,” the statement said.

A military official said yesterday that Pentagon officials had sided with General Hartmann in the dispute.

Yesterday, Colonel Davis said he could not discuss the developments. “I’m under direct orders,” he said, “not to comment with the media about the reasons for my resignation or military commissions.”

Gregory S. McNeal, an assistant professor at the Dickinson School of Law at Pennsylvania State University, said the effort to begin war-crimes trials would probably continue. But Mr. McNeal, who has been a consultant to the military prosecutors, said the questions Colonel Davis raised would be exploited by defense lawyers.

“The last thing the prosecution needs is officials influencing the prosecutions,” he said.

Critics of the administration have argued that the effort to design a military commission system for foreign terror suspects is intended to circumvent the legal protections that detainees would receive if they were charged in civilian courts. Some of those critics said yesterday that the dispute underscored their concerns.

“This is further evidence that the military commission process is completely unraveling,” said J. Wells Dixon, a detainees’ lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

“That is endemic,” Mr. Dixon added, “to any system that is made up as you go along.”

    War-Crimes Prosecutor Quits in Pentagon Clash, NYT, 6.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/us/nationalspecial3/06gitmo.html

The Erosion of a Murder Case Against Marines in the Killing of 24 Iraqi Civilians

October 6, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

BAGHDAD, Oct. 5 — Last year, when accounts of the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha by a group of marines came to light, it seemed that the Iraq war had produced its defining atrocity, just as the conflict in Vietnam had spawned the My Lai massacre a generation ago.

But on Thursday, a senior military investigator recommended dropping murder charges against the ranking enlisted marine accused in the 2005 killings, just as he had done earlier in the cases of two other marines charged in the case. The recommendation may well have ended prosecutors’ chances of winning any murder convictions in the killings of the apparently unarmed men, women and children.

In the recent case, against Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the investigator recommended that he be charged with negligent homicide if the case moved ahead to court-martial. In the other two cases, the investigator recommended dropping all charges.

Experts in military justice say the Haditha prosecutions were compromised by several factors having to do with the quality of the evidence, including a delayed investigation and the decision to conduct hearings in the United States, far from the scene of the killings and possible Iraqi witnesses.

The cases also reflect the particular views of Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware, who presided over the hearings and concluded that all three cases lacked sufficient evidence. He made clear in his recommendations to the commander who ultimately decides the cases that he felt that the killings should be considered in context — that of a war zone where the enemy ruthlessly employed civilians as cover.

Perhaps nothing handicapped military prosecutors more than the delay in investigating the killings, on Nov. 19, 2005, because battalion officers initially decided the case did not require an inquiry. The attack began after a roadside bombing of the marines’ convoy killed a comrade; led by Sergeant Wuterich, a group of marines then killed 24 people over several hours. Nineteen of the 24 were killed in their homes.

By the time the Marine Corps announced murder charges against the infantrymen, 13 months had passed. Evidence vanished, witnesses evaporated and memories paled.

Those problems with collecting evidence were further complicated because Haditha remained a combat zone. When forensic experts traveled there last year to interview family members of those killed, heavily armed Marine infantrymen had to guard them, and even then, insurgent fire forced the investigators to abandon the scene after an hour.

Beyond that, Islamic custom dictates that families bury their dead within hours. Relatives of those killed in Haditha refused American requests to exhume the bodies for forensic analysis.

In addition, the collection of evidence was hurt by the decision to hold evidentiary hearings for the marines in the Haditha case at Camp Pendleton, Calif., rather than in Baghdad, where some other cases have been heard.

“In the Vietnam era, you often had the lawyers, the witnesses, the scene, the victims’ families — you had them right there,” said Gary D. Solis, a former Marine judge who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University Law Center. “If you happened to have a witness who had rotated back to the United States, you could call them back.”

In the end, in Colonel Ware’s view, expressed in dozens of pages of analysis and opinion in his reports on all three cases, the Haditha prosecutors failed to amass enough evidence to win a conviction.

In his latest report, in which he recommended dismissing 10 murder charges against Sergeant Wuterich and reducing seven others to negligent homicide, Colonel Ware wrote that the evidence presented to him “is simply not strong enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.”

He made similar conclusions in his reports on the cases against two other infantrymen for whom he urged the dismissal of all charges: Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, whose murder charges were subsequently thrown out by the commanding general overseeing the case, and Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, who is still waiting to hear the general’s decision. Commanders usually follow investigators’ recommendations.

“When you have an investigating officer like Ware, who says ‘don’t go there if you can’t prove,’” your case, Mr. Solis said, “we’re left with what appear to be very reduced charges.” He added: “He’s aggressive, and he seems to make his judgments without regard for anything but the law. He must know that people — civilians, primarily — are going to howl about this, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern.”

Other military law experts also noted that in his two reports on the charges against Lance Corporals Sharratt and Tatum, Colonel Ware revealed a willingness to give the men the benefit of the doubt, and to consider the impact of the prosecutions on the morale of troops still fighting in Iraq.

“It does surprise me to see that the killing of seven women and children by grenades and rifles, for the purposes of clearing structures, is being treated the way this investigating officer has treated it,” said Eugene R. Fidell, an expert in military law in Washington.

In an unusual departure from the analysis of the facts in Lance Corporal Sharratt’s case, Colonel Ware warned that putting marines on trial for murder without having the evidence to prove it could “erode public support of the Marine Corps and mission in Iraq.”

Michael F. Noone, a law professor at Catholic University and a retired Air Force lawyer, said Colonel Ware was right to assume that rulings in the Haditha cases might have an impact on the overall war effort. Last week, he noted, testimony in a Baghdad military murder trial suggested that an Army sniper, a member of one of the most highly trained infantry units, had planted evidence on the remains of a dead fighter — as insurance against second-guessing.

“That’s somebody who doesn’t trust the system,” Professor Noone said. “Do you want kids out there representing the United States who don’t think they’re going to be treated fairly?”

    The Erosion of a Murder Case Against Marines in the Killing of 24 Iraqi Civilians, NYT, 6.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/world/middleeast/06haditha.html

US Army Sniper Sentenced in Iraq Deaths

September 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:36 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The court-martial that cleared a U.S. Army sniper of two counts of murder sentenced him Saturday to five months in prison, reduced his rank to private and ordered his pay withheld for planting evidence in the deaths of two Iraqi civilians.

Sectarian violence, meanwhile, claimed at least 40 more lives across Iraq, with a flurry of attacks around the northern city of Mosul where bombs, gunmen and mortar fire killed 14.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed by gunfire, one in Diyala province north of Baghdad and one in a southern district of the capital.

Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval, 22, was acquitted Friday of murder charges in the April and May deaths of two unidentified men. The five-man, two-woman panel decided he was guilty of a lesser charges of placing detonation wire on one of the bodies to make it look as if the man was an insurgent.

''I feel fortunate that I have been served this sentence,'' Sandoval said. ''I'm grateful that I'm able to continue to be in the Army.''

Military prosecutors had argued Sandoval should be sentenced to five years in prison.

The Laredo, Texas-native had faced five charges in the deaths of the two unidentified Iraqi men. In dramatic testimony during the four-day court-martial, one of Sandoval's colleagues, Sgt. Evan Vela, testified he had pulled the trigger and killed one of the men Sandoval was accused of murdering.

Vela said the sniper team was following orders when it shot the men during two separate incidents near Iskandariyah, a volatile Sunni-dominated area 30 miles south of Baghdad, on April 27 and May 11.

Vela and Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley will be tried separately in the case. All three soldiers are part of the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Gary Myers, one of Vela's lawyers, claimed this week that Army snipers hunting insurgents in Iraq were under orders to ''bait'' their targets with suspicious materials, such as detonation cords, then kill those who picked up the items. He said his client was acting on orders.

Asked about the ''baiting program,'' Capt. Craig Drummond, Sandoval's military defense attorney, said it was unclear ''what programs were going on out there and when,'' especially ''if there were things that were done that made the rules of engagement not clear.''

Vela goes before an Article 34 hearing, the equivalent of a civilian grand jury, on Sunday. The U.S. military, which initially said the hearing would be open to reporters, subsequently closed the proceedings. Hensley, who has already faced such a hearing, goes on trial Oct. 22.

In violence Saturday, Iraqi soldiers acting on a tip tried to intercept a suicide driver as his pickup truck headed toward Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. As the Iraqi Humvee neared the truck, the driver detonated his explosive payload, according to the officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Three soldiers and three civilians were killed, the official said.

Twenty-five miles northeast of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, a parked car bomb exploded in Hamdaniyah, killing four policemen and two civilians, according to police Brig. Mohammed al-Wagga.

Also in Mosul, a drive-by gunman killed a top local Sunni religious figure and a journalist died in a mortar attack.

At the end of a three-day trip to Syria, Iraq's Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi said his country would not be used as a base to launch attacks against Iran or Syria.

The Sunni vice president said he discussed security and other regional issues with Syrian President Bashar Assad on Saturday.

In response to a reporter's question about a possible U.S. military strike against Iran, the Iraqi vice president said: ''Iraq does not accept that its territory be used for any aggression against any neighboring country.''

The government, meanwhile, announced a start date for the reconstruction of a revered Shiite shrine badly damaged in two bombings, one of which unleashed the sectarian strife that has shredded the fabric of Iraq society.

Rebuilding of the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, will begin after the holy month of Ramadan in mid-October, said Haqi al-Hakim, a construction adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The first attack on the shrine's golden dome in February 2006 by suspected al-Qaida bombers ignited sectarian fighting between Sunnis and Shiites that has plagued Iraq ever since. A second attack a year later toppled the towering minarets of the shrine.

    US Army Sniper Sentenced in Iraq Deaths, NYT, 29.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq.html

US Army Sniper Not Guilty of Murder

September 28, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:54 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGHDAD (AP) -- A military panel Friday acquitted U.S. Army Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval on charges he killed two unarmed Iraqis, but it convicted him of planting evidence on one of the men in attempt to cover up the shooting.

Sandoval, 22, of Laredo, Texas, had faced five charges in the April and May deaths of two unidentified men. He was found not guilty of the two murder charges, but the panel decided he had placed a detonation wire on one of the bodies to make it look as if the man was an insurgent.

Lawyers for Sandoval, who will be sentenced Saturday, said he should face no more than six months in prison for misplacement of public property, while prosecutors argued he should receive a five-year sentence for obstructing justice.

''Anyone who has been charged with murder for their first kill on the battlefield on the order of his superior and is found not guilty is happy,'' Capt. Craig Drummond, a defense attorney, said outside court after the verdict.

During the two-day court-martial, Sandoval's colleagues testified they were following orders when they shot the men during two separate incidents on April 27 and May 11.

Spc. Alexander Flores, who was in the same squad as Sandoval on the day of the April killing, testified they were acting on the orders of their platoon leader who said the suspect was ''our guy'' and ordered them to ''move in,'' which they interpreted as ''take the target out.''

After the killing, Flores said Staff Sgt. Michael Hensley of Candler, N.C., told him to place a spool of detonation wire on the body and in the man's pocket.

But prosecutors cited an interview with Sandoval immediately after his arrest in which he said he planted the wire. Outside court, Flores stood by his testimony.

''He was just doing his job, as he was told. It's not his fault,'' said Flores, who, along with the rest of Sandoval's sniper platoon, greeted him with hugs and well wishes.

In the May shooting, Sgt. Evan Vela of Rigby, Idaho, said Hensley told him to shoot the man, who had stumbled upon their snipers' hide-out, although he was not armed and had his hands in the air when he approached the soldiers.

''He (Hensley) asked me if I was ready. I had the pistol out. I heard the word shoot. I don't remember pulling the trigger. It took me a second to realize that the shot came from the pistol in my hand,'' Vela testified, crying.

Vela said that as the Iraqi man was convulsing on the ground, ''Hensley kind of laughed about it and hit the guy on the throat and said shoot again.''

''After he (the Iraqi man) was shot, Hensley pulled an AK-47 out of his rucksack and said, 'This is what we are going to say happened,''' said Vela, who testified under a deal that bars his account of events from being used against him when he goes to trial. Sandoval also was acquitted Friday of charges he planted the weapon on the second man's body.

Vela and Hensley are both charged in the case and will be tried separately.

The three soldiers are part of the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Vela's lawyer, Gary Myers, alleged this week that Army snipers hunting insurgents in Iraq were under orders to ''bait'' their targets with suspicious materials, such as detonation cords, then kill those who picked up the items. He said his client was acting on ''orders.''

Asked about the existence of the ''baiting program,'' Drummond said it was unclear ''what programs were going on out there and when,'' especially ''if there were things that were done that made the rules of engagement not clear.''

    US Army Sniper Not Guilty of Murder, NYT, 28.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Soldier-Trial.html

Court Advances Military Trials for Detainees

September 25, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — A special military appeals court, overturning a lower court ruling, on Monday removed a legal hurdle that has derailed war crime trials for detainees at Guantanámo Bay, Cuba.

The ruling allows military prosecutors to address a legal flaw that had ground the prosecutions to a halt. The decision, by a three-judge panel of a newly formed military appeals court, was an important victory for the government in its protracted efforts to begin prosecuting some of the 340 detainees at Guantánamo.

The legal flaw involved a requirement by Congress that before the detainees could be tried in military tribunals, they had to be formally declared “alien unlawful enemy combatants.” The problem for prosecutors was that while the detainees had been found by a military panel to be enemy combatants, they had not been specifically found to be unlawful.

Under the ruling, prosecutors will be able to present new evidence to the war crimes trial judge hearing a case to support their contention that a detainee was an unlawful combatant. Until now, only one case has been resolved, that of an Australian citizen who accepted a plea deal in March.

The legal flaw was cited in June by a military judge, Col. Peter E. Brownback III, in a ruling dismissing charges against a detainee.

The question of the detainees’ formal status has stalled the entire war crimes system and frustrated administration officials.

The three appeals judges said yesterday that Judge Brownback had “abused his discretion in deciding this critical jurisdictional matter without first fully considering” the government’s evidence. The appeals court sent the case back to Judge Brownback for further consideration.

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon said last night that military officials were pleased by the ruling. “We welcome the court’s decision,” Commander Gordon said. “We will proceed in the most expeditious manner to get the military commission cases to trial.”

Lawyers said there was legal uncertainly about whether the defense could appeal Monday’s ruling, which came in the case of Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Canadian detainee who was charged with killing an American soldier in a firefight and other crimes.

Dennis Edney, Mr. Khadr’s Canadian lawyer, said the defense was considering whether to appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. If there is an appeal, it could delay the resumption of Guantánamo cases yet again.

Mr. Edney said he was disappointed by the military panel’s ruling but not surprised. “Omar Khadr still faces a process that is tainted, and designed to make a finding of guilt,” he said.

But some military officials expressed relief that the hearing process appeared to be “back on track” as one put it.

The chief prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force, said that after the ruling in Mr. Khadr’s case prosecutors would consider filing new charges against other detainees.

“We’ve got other cases that are ready,” Colonel Davis said. “I think very shortly we’ll be moving forward with some other cases.” Colonel Davis has said as many as 80 detainees may eventually face war crimes charges,

On the same day in June that Judge Brownback dismissed Mr. Khadr’s case, a second military judge made a similar ruling in the case of a Yemeni detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. Mr. Hamdan’s appeal of an earlier effort to prosecute him led to a Supreme Court decision in which the justices struck down the administration’s first system for war-crimes trials.

Prosecutors asked the military judge in Mr. Hamdan’s case, Capt. Keith Allred of the Navy, to reconsider, but he has not yet issued a reconsidered ruling.

The military appeals court said in its ruling yesterday that Judge Brownback was wrong in concluding that he did not have the authority to decide whether a detainee was an “unlawful” enemy combatant, which would give his court the power to hear a war-crimes case.

The court said the trial judge could hear the government’s evidence that a detainee was an unlawful combatant. An unlawful combatant, for example, could be a fighter who does not wear a uniform and conceals his weapons.

In Mr. Khadr’s case, prosecutors said their evidence included a videotape of Mr. Khadr, 15 at the time, preparing explosives for use against American forces.

In the ruling Monday, the military appeals judges, the United States Court of Military Commission Review, agreed that the law written by Congress did say that finding by a military panel that a detainee was an “unlawful” enemy combatant was a prerequisite for prosecution. But the judges said Congress intended the Guantánamo courts to apply usual procedures of military courts.

“This would include the common procedures used before general courts-martial permitting military judges to hear evidence and decide factual and legal matters concerning the court’s own jurisdiction over the accused appearing before it,” the appeals judges wrote.

    Court Advances Military Trials for Detainees, NYT, 25.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/washington/25gitmo.html?hp

Hearing in Killing of Afghan Puts Army War Effort on Trial

September 20, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL VON ZIELBAUER

FORT BRAGG, N.C., Sept. 19 — At the close of a two-day hearing on charges that Special Forces soldiers murdered an Afghan man near his home last October, it is increasingly evident that the Army is also examining itself and how it is fighting the war in Afghanistan.

A Special Forces colonel presiding over the hearing must determine whether sufficient evidence exists to recommend courts-martial for the two soldiers accused of killing the man, Nawab Buntangyar, who had been identified as an “enemy combatant,” while he walked unarmed outside his home near the Pakistan border.

But the focus of the hearing frequently shifted from the soldiers’ actions and toward the Army’s decision to bring charges against them. It also shifted to the effect on the Afghan people of Special Forces soldiers being allowed to kill some Afghan fighters more or less on sight.

From the beginning of the proceeding, Col. Kevin A. Christie, the presiding officer, seemed pressed to figure out why a military lawyer pursued murder charges after an Army investigation cleared the two soldiers of wrongdoing when they killed Mr. Buntangyar, who as a designated enemy combatant was subject to attack under the Special Forces’ classified rules of engagement.

In questions to several witnesses, Colonel Christie indicated that the Army was aware of the risks of trying to win the tactical battle in Afghanistan by aggressively pursuing the enemy in an unconventional war, as balanced against the potential expense of losing the larger strategic battle for the hearts and minds of Afghan civilians.

The decision by the general in charge of Special Forces to allow limited public access to the hearing was itself a sign of the Army’s desire to be seen as reflective and open to scrutiny, specialists in military justice said.

In an exchange that reflected the underlying issues of concern to the Special Forces command here, Colonel Christie asked Maj. Matthew McHale, the company commander in charge of the assault team that included the two accused soldiers, about the repercussions of how his men had killed Mr. Buntangyar.

Mr. Buntangyar was killed on Oct. 13, 2006, when Master Sgt. Troy Anderson, acting on orders from Capt. Dave Staffel, shot him in the face from a distance of about 100 feet. The order to shoot came after Afghan Border Police officers had surrounded Mr. Buntangyar’s home, exchanged a friendly greeting with him and asked him twice to confirm his identity. Captain Staffel and Sergeant Anderson were charged with premeditated murder in June, two months after an Army investigation determined Mr. Buntangyar’s “enemy combatant” status justified killing him.

“Would you tell your teams to do things that had limited tactical effects if they had potential strategic negative effects?” Colonel Christie asked Major McHale.

The major said assault teams continually weigh the two goals during missions.

The colonel asked if he thought the “strategic effect” of shooting a man whom the Afghan police had essentially lured out of his home “adds to the credibility of the police,” an institution that the American military is desperate to make independent and trustworthy in the eyes of local residents.

Major McHale conceded that the killing could undermine the public perception of the police. But, he added, they were unreliable and often sloppy. At the home, the police had to gesture to communicate with Special Forces soldiers because the police had accidentally locked their radios and car keys in their vehicles.

    Hearing in Killing of Afghan Puts Army War Effort on Trial, NYT, 20.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/us/20abuse.html

Marines Punish 3 Officers in Haditha Case

September 6, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Sept. 5 — The Marine Corps said Wednesday that it had formally reprimanded a two-star general and two colonels for their failure to thoroughly investigate why a group of enlisted men killed 24 Iraqis, including several women and children, in Haditha nearly two years ago.

Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter issued letters of censure to Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, the commander of the Second Marine Division at the time; Col. R. Gary Sokoloski, who was the division’s lawyer and the legal adviser to General Huck; and Col. Stephen W. Davis, the commander of a regimental combat team that was in charge of the infantry battalion involved in the Haditha episode, on Nov. 19, 2005.

The announcement of the punishment against the three officers came on the third day of a hearing here for Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the last enlisted man to face murder charges in connection with the Haditha killings. Sergeant Wuterich, 27, is charged with killing 17 people, including a group of seven women and children hiding in a house, in the hours after a roadside bomb had killed one marine and wounded two others.

The letters of censure — administrative punishments that effectively rule out promotions to higher ranks — were issued after senior generals determined that the three officers had not intended to cover up evidence or acted in a manner that warranted criminal charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Marine Corps said.

Letters of censure are issued almost always confidentially. The Marine Corps’s decision to announce these censures reflects the enormous interest military leaders have in shaping the public perception that wrongdoing in Iraq, even by senior commanders, will be punished.

General Huck, who learned of the civilian deaths in Haditha the morning they occurred, was punished for not ensuring that his field commanders found out how and why infantrymen killed so many noncombatants, a development to which marine commanders were told to be especially sensitive. Colonel Sokoloski appeared to have been censured because he waited two weeks to tell General Huck, in early 2006, that a Time magazine reporter was asking questions about accusations that there had been a massacre in Haditha. Colonel Davis, a highly regarded combat commander in Iraq, was also censured for knowing about the civilian deaths but not seeking a detailed explanation from his battalion commander, who was charged last December with failing to investigate the killings.

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, the commander of the Marine Corps Forces Central Command, determined that the three officers’ “actions, or inactions, demonstrated lack of due diligence on the part of senior commanders and staff.”

General Huck, now an assistant deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations at the Pentagon, is believed to be the highest ranking officer on active duty to be formally and publicly punished by the military since the beginning of the Iraq war. The Marine Corps delayed processing his retirement request after eight marines were charged with crimes stemming from the killings in Haditha.

Four infantrymen, including Sergeant Wuterich, were initially charged with murder in the case. Marine prosecutors dropped the charges against one of them. The cases against the two others were recommended for dismissal, and General Mattis — the convening authority in the Haditha matter — later dismissed charges against one of them.

Four officers at the battalion and company levels, including the commander of the First Marines, Third Battalion, who reported to Colonel Davis, were also charged with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the episode thoroughly.

Another marine investigator who weighed evidence against the Third Battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, recommended that dereliction of duty charges against him proceed to court martial. Charges against another of the officers, a battalion lawyer, were dismissed. Charges against the other two officers, a company commander and an intelligence officer, will be heard in upcoming evidentiary hearings.

Meanwhile, in Sergeant Wuterich’s hearing here, lawyers and the presiding officer have been grappling with perhaps the most basic issue in his case: did the Marine Corps require him and his comrades to discern noncombatants concealed in a home that they were attacking, and to avoid harming them?

In a sworn statement he gave in Haditha in February 2006 to an Army colonel investigating the Haditha episode, Sergeant Wuterich said he told three marines under his command to “shoot first, ask questions later” as they prepared to attack a house that they thought was the source of enemy fire.

Testifying for the prosecution, Capt. Alphonso Capers, who supervised Sergeant Wuterich’s training of junior marines in tactical combat operations and the rules of engagement, said such a statement appeared to violate Marine Corps training and values.

But on cross-examination by Sergeant Wuterich’s lawyers, Captain Capers suggested that, in combat, many tactical and moral gray areas exist to which the Marine Corps is unable to give absolute answers during training; the training, he said, most often involved only “recommendations.”

    Marines Punish 3 Officers in Haditha Case, NYT, 6.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06haditha.html

At Marines’ Hearing, Testament to Violence

September 1, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Aug. 31 — A Marine sergeant offered gruesome testimony on Friday against a former squad leader charged with killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Haditha nearly two years ago, suggesting that the defendant, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, was predisposed to the violence, carried it out ruthlessly and sought to cover it up.

The prosecution witness, Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, was ordered to testify with immunity after murder charges against him for killing five of the men were dismissed in April.

On Thursday, prosecutors dropped one charge against Sergeant Wuterich in the killing of an 18th victim, a man in the last of four homes that the sergeant and other squad members searched on Nov. 19, 2005, after a bomb hit the marines’ convoy.

At Friday’s hearing, to determine whether the charges against Sergeant Wuterich should progress to a court-martial, Sergeant Dela Cruz testified that Sergeant Wuterich shot five unarmed men as they stood behind a car, some with their hands interlocked behind their heads in a surrender posture, in the moments after the bomb exploded.

He also said Sergeant Wuterich fired more rounds into the bodies of all five men as they lay dead or dying near a car a short distance from the attack.

Sergeant Wuterich has said he shot the five men, but only after they ran away, which he believed constituted a hostile act that allowed him to use deadly force.

Sergeant Dela Cruz told prosecutors that a week before the Haditha episode, Sergeant Wuterich had reacted to an earlier roadside bombing by telling him and other marines in the unit, “If we ever get hit again, we should kill everybody in that area.”

Sergeant Dela Cruz said that after killing the five men in Haditha, Sergeant Wuterich turned to him and said, “If anyone asks, say they were running away.”

It is unclear how much weight the hearing’s presiding officer will give to the testimony of Sergeant Dela Cruz, whose credibility has been an issue in hearings for other marines charged in the Haditha killings. The presiding officer, Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware, will recommend to a Marine Corps general whether to try Sergeant Wuterich in a full court-martial.

Sergeant Dela Cruz has admitted to lying to an Army colonel who initially investigated the Haditha episode, in which Marine riflemen killed 24 Iraqis, including at least 10 women and children, after a roadside bomb killed one of their comrades.

In a sworn statement, he told the colonel that Iraqi Army soldiers traveling with his unit had killed the five men near the car, and that he had yelled at them to stop, to no avail.

Sergeant Wuterich’s lawyers took pains to point out that Sergeant Dela Cruz’s immunity deal protected him from being charged in the Haditha episode, and they have said he lied about Sergeant Wuterich’s actions to cover up his own criminal behavior in Haditha.

Another witness on Friday, Staff Sgt. Justin Laughner, a member of a Marine intelligence unit that inspected the scene of the Haditha killings, said Sergeant Wuterich had told him the men had run from the car when they were shot.

Sergeant Laughner also said squad members had been worried that the car could have been carrying a bomb.

    At Marines’ Hearing, Testament to Violence, NYT, 1.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/world/middleeast/01haditha.html?hp

Editorial

Abu Ghraib Swept Under the Carpet

August 30, 2007
The New York Times

We would have been hard pressed to think of a more sadly suitable coda to the Bush administration’s mishandling of the Abu Ghraib nightmare than Tuesday’s verdict in the court-martial of the only officer to be tried for the abuse, sexual assault and torture of prisoners that occurred there in 2003.

The verdict was a remix of the denial of reality and avoidance of accountability that the government has used all along to avoid the bitter truth behind Abu Ghraib: The abuses grew out of President Bush’s decision to ignore the Geneva Conventions and American law in handling prisoners after Sept. 11, 2001.

The man on trial, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, was not a career officer. He was one of a multitude of reservists pressed into Iraq duty, many of them for jobs beyond their experience or abilities. A military jury of nine colonels and a brigadier general decided that he was not to blame for the failure to train or supervise the Abu Ghraib jailers and acquitted him on all charges related to the abuse. He was convicted only of disobeying an order to keep silent about Abu Ghraib. Even that drew only a reprimand, from an organization that Colonel Jordan presumably has no further interest in serving.

Our purpose is not to second-guess the verdict. Rather, we fear that this and the other Abu Ghraib trials have served no larger purpose than punishing 11 low-ranking soldiers who committed despicable acts. Not one officer has been punished beyond a reprimand, and there has been even less accountability at higher levels.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top officials have long claimed that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were the disconnected acts of a small number of sociopaths. It’s clear that is not true.

Abusive interrogations, many of them amounting to torture, were first developed for Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after Mr. Bush declared that international and American law did not protect members of Taliban or Al Qaeda, or any other foreigner he chose to designate as an “unlawful enemy combatant.” Once the signal was sent that prisoners in the “war on terror” were not entitled to decent treatment, cynical lawyers, including Alberto Gonzales, who was then the White House counsel, conjured up perverse legal arguments to ensure that the jailers’ bosses would not be prosecuted for abusing them. The techniques and attitudes developed in Guantánamo Bay were exported to Afghanistan, and then to Iraq.

Pentagon officials say they have learned the bitter lessons of Abu Ghraib, but their civilian bosses clearly have not. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 did not provide adequate protection to military prisoners, and it gave the Central Intelligence Agency carte blanche to run overseas prisons to which anonymous men are sent for indefinite detention and abuse. In July, Mr. Bush issued an executive order reaffirming his policy of ignoring the Geneva Conventions when he chooses, and approving abusive interrogations at C.I.A. prisons.

The need to be honest about Abu Ghraib and correct the abuses at military and C.I.A. prisons is not only about upholding the law and American values. It is about the safety of American soldiers. Every right the United States denies to its detainees may one day be denied to Americans captured in wartime. Every abuse the United States visits on detainees increases the risk of American soldiers being abused in foreign prisons.

If humanity and law are not reasons enough to end the detainee abuse, then it should be done for the cause that Mr. Bush invokes daily: supporting the troops.

    Abu Ghraib Swept Under the Carpet, NYT, 30.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/opinion/30thu1.html

Marines’ Trials in Iraq Killings Are Withering

August 30, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Aug. 29 — Last December, when the Marine Corps charged four infantrymen with killing Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005, the allegation was as dark as it was devastating: after a roadside bomb had killed their buddy, a group of marines rampaged through nearby homes, massacring 24 innocent people.

In Iraq and in the United States, the killings were viewed as cold-blooded vengeance. After a perfunctory military investigation, Haditha was brushed aside, but once the details were disclosed, the killings became an ugly symbol of a difficult, demoralizing war. After a fuller investigation, the Marines promised to punish the guilty.

But now, the prosecutions have faltered. Since May, charges against two infantrymen and a Marine officer have been dismissed, and dismissal has been recommended for murder charges against a third infantryman. Prosecutors were not able to prove even that the killings violated the American military code of justice.

Now their final attempt to get a murder conviction is set to begin, with a military court hearing on Thursday for Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the last marine still facing that charge. He is accused of killing 18 Iraqis, including several women and children, after the attack on his convoy.

If the legal problems that have thwarted the prosecutors in other cases are repeated this time, there is a possibility that no marine will be convicted for what happened in Haditha.

Nor is it yet clear whether officers higher up the chain of command than Sergeant Wuterich will be held responsible for the inadequate initial investigation.

At least one of the four Marine officers charged last December for failing to investigate the civilian deaths appears to be headed to court-martial. That officer, Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, commander of Third Battalion, First Marines, “did not take personal action to fully investigate the actions leading to civilian deaths,” concluded Col. Christopher C. Conlin, the officer who examined the evidence.

But the case against Capt. Randy W. Stone, the battalion lawyer charged with failing to find out why so many civilians had been killed, was thrown out by Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, whose decisions in the Haditha prosecutions are final. Charges against First Lt. Andrew A. Grayson, an intelligence officer, are in limbo because of his argument that the Marine Corps has discharged him.

In a wide range of cases involving abuses by American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, prosecutions have tended to focus on enlisted men and noncommissioned officers — those accused of having personally committed the acts — not on officers who commanded the units. And while there have been numerous convictions, there have also been many cases in which plea arrangements allowed for lesser punishments, or in which charges were dropped or found not to be warranted.

The sole officer to face criminal charges in the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, was convicted Tuesday on only one minor charge and will be reprimanded, Reuters reported, quoting an Army announcement. The officer, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, faced five years in prison and dismissal from the Army, but a court-martial decided on the milder penalty, the Army said.

The court-martial acquitted him of the charge of being responsible for cruel treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

Experts on military law said the difficulty in prosecuting the marines for murder is understandable, given that action taken in combat is often given immunity under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

“One could view this as a case crumbling around the prosecutor’s feet, or one could see this as the unique U.C.M.J. system of justice in operation,” said Gary D. Solis, a former Marine judge who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University Law Center and at West Point.

Prosecuting the Haditha case was especially difficult because the killings were not thoroughly investigated when they first occurred. Months later, when the details came to light, there were no bodies to examine, no Iraqi witnesses to testify, no damning forensic evidence.

On the other hand, some scholars said the spate of dismissals has left them wondering what to think of the young enlisted marines who, illegally or not, clearly killed unarmed people in a combat zone.

“It certainly erodes that sense that what they did was wrong,” Elizabeth L. Hillman, a legal historian who teaches military law at Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, said of the outcomes so far. “When the story broke, it seemed like we understood what happened; there didn’t seem to be much doubt. But we didn’t know.”

Walter B. Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general, said it was not uncommon in military criminal proceedings to see charges against troops involved in a single episode to fall away under closer examination of evidence, winnowing culpability to just one or two defendants.

When Sergeant Wuterich, the soft-spoken squad leader who faces the most extensive murder charges in the Haditha matter, walks into court here on Thursday, “all the prosecutorial attention is now going to center on him,” Mr. Solis said.

Sergeant Wuterich’s lawyers have an uphill legal fight. First, unlike the other marines who faced murder charges, Sergeant Wuterich is charged with the close-range killing of five unarmed men who were ordered out of a vehicle that rolled up near the scene.

Also, as a noncommissioned officer and the ranking member of the squad, Sergeant Wuterich may be used by prosecutors to argue that he had a greater responsibility to discern proper targets and avoid civilian casualties. He also led the attack against or was present in every house where civilians were killed.

But the earlier cases show that the defense has some opportunities, too.

The presiding officer, Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware, is the same Marine lawyer who conducted hearings for Justin L. Sharratt and Stephen B. Tatum, two other lance corporals accused of killing a total of five Iraqis in three homes in Haditha.

Colonel Ware later recommended dismissing the charges against those two men, and he has said the killings should be viewed in the context of combat against an enemy that ruthlessly employs civilians as cover. He warned that murder charges against marines could harm the morale of troops still in Iraq.

General Mattis’s statements expressing sympathy for the plight of other enlisted marines whom he cleared of wrongdoing in Haditha may indicate his willingness to see Sergeant Wuterich’s case in a similar light.

Regardless of what happened to charges against the other defendants, there is still great public pressure on the Marine Corps to investigate and punish any wrongdoing in a case in which so many civilians died.

“We can’t say those guys didn’t commit a crime,” said Michael F. Noone Jr., a retired Air Force lawyer and law professor at Catholic University of America. “We can only say that after an investigation, there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute.”

    Marines’ Trials in Iraq Killings Are Withering, NYT, 30.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/world/middleeast/30haditha.html?hp

Jury Reprimands Abu Ghraib Officer

August 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:20 a.m. ET
The New York Times

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) -- A military jury on Wednesday reprimanded the only officer court-martialed in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, sparing him any prison time for disobeying an order to keep silent about the abuse investigation.

The jury had acquitted Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan a day earlier of all three charges directly related to the mistreatment of detainees at the U.S.-run prison in Iraq.

Those verdicts absolved Jordan, 51, of responsibility for the actions of 11 lower-ranking soldiers who have already been convicted for their roles at Abu Ghraib. The allegations surfaced after the release of disturbing photographs showing U.S. soldiers grinning alongside detainees held in humiliating positions.

Jordan was convicted of a single charge: disobeying a general's order not to discuss the abuse investigation. The defense conceded that Jordan e-mailed a number of soldiers about the investigation after meeting with Maj. Gen. George Fay in spring 2004.

The impact of the reprimand on Jordan's career was not immediately clear.

''We view this as very much a victory,'' defense attorney Maj. Kris Poppe said after the sentence. Jordan could have been sentenced to up to five years in prison, though prosecutors had recommended a reprimand and a find of one month's pay, about $7,400.

Jordan, a reservist from Fredericksburg, Va., never appeared in any of the inflammatory photos, but as director of the prison's interrogation center and the highest ranking officer there at the time, he had been accused of fostering a climate conducive to abuse.

The prosecution had suggested that it wasn't about what Jordan did at Abu Ghraib, but what he didn't do.

The nine colonels and one brigadier general who made up the jury, however, found him not guilty of the three abuse-related charges: cruelty and maltreatment for subjecting detainees to forced nudity and intimidation by dogs; dereliction of a duty to properly train and supervise soldiers in humane interrogation rules; and failing to obey a lawful general order by ordering dogs used for interrogations without higher approval.

Those acquittals suggested that criminality went no higher than former Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick, a military police reservist from Buckingham, Va., who is serving an eight-year sentence.

Hina Shamsi, deputy director of New York-based Human Rights First, said an ''accountability gap'' remains between the convicted soldiers and high-ranking military and government officials who sanctioned harsh interrogation techniques.

''None of the cases brought to date has given the systemic accounting the nation needs of what happened, why and how far up the chain of command responsibility lies,'' Shamsi said. ''It cries out for the kind of oversight and investigations that Congress can do.''

John Sifton, senior counterterrorism researcher with Washington-based Human Rights Watch, called Jordan's prosecution ''amateurish and half-baked'' and said the military lacked the will to get to the bottom of the abuse.

Jordan told the jury during his sentencing hearing Tuesday that he took sole responsibility for his actions. He indicated that he had misunderstood Fay's command and failed to seek clarification.

Jordan said he had been living and working under a cloud since the investigation began 3 1/2 years ago.

''When I first saw photographs of the horrible abuses at Abu Ghraib, I was shocked and I was saddened,'' he said. ''After today, I hope the wounds of Abu Ghraib can start to heal.''

Jordan was the last of 12 defendants to go to trial. Of the 11 enlisted soldiers convicted of crimes, the longest sentence, 10 years, was given to former Cpl. Charles Graner Jr., of Uniontown, Pa., in January 2005. Lynndie England, the most recognizable face from the Abu Ghraib photos, was sentenced to three years.

    Jury Reprimands Abu Ghraib Officer, NYT, 29.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Abu-Ghraib-Jordan.html

Colonel Is Acquitted in Abu Ghraib Abuse Case

August 29, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

A military jury acquitted an Army officer on Tuesday of charges that he failed to properly train and supervise enlisted soldiers involved in detainee interrogations in 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where prisoners were subjected to brutal treatment.

In the court-martial at Fort Meade, Md., the jury of nine Army colonels and a brigadier general found the officer, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, guilty of only one lesser offense, that of disobeying an order to refrain from discussing the case.

Colonel Jordan, 51, was the only officer to stand trial on charges related to the detainee-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, which led to prolonged investigations and charges against several soldiers.

Colonel Jordan’s acquittal on most charges means that no officers have been found criminally responsible for the abuses at the prison. Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the military intelligence officer who ran Abu Ghraib, was punished administratively by senior Army commanders for improperly allowing military dogs to be used during interrogations to frighten detainees. Janis Karpinski, the brigadier general who was the military police commander at Abu Ghraib, was reprimanded and demoted.

During Colonel Jordan’s seven-day court-martial, Army lawyers representing him argued that he was not responsible for training and supervising the military police soldiers who abused detainees from mid-September to late December 2004. Rather, his lawyers argued, he served as a manager of sorts at the prison, focused on making living and working conditions at Abu Ghraib, a notorious complex that Saddam Hussein’s government had used to torture its enemies, as accommodating as possible.

The jury members apparently were not convinced by the conclusions of two generals who had investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal and found that Colonel Jordan’s “tacit approval” of violent techniques by the military police during an episode in November 2003 was “the causative factor that set the stage for the abuses that followed for days afterward.”

For his conviction of disobeying an order to not discuss his case, Colonel Jordan, currently on active duty with the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Va., faces a maximum of five years in prison. The jury is expected to deliver a sentence on Wednesday morning.

His lawyers, Capt. Samuel Spitzberg and Maj. Kris Poppe, declined to comment on Tuesday.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Colonel Jordan expressed frustration at the charges against him and said he believed that they were politically motivated, to allow the Army to assert that it had tried at least one officer on criminal charges in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

John Sifton, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the verdict was “a disappointment but not a surprise,” given the meager case he said prosecutors presented to the jury of senior officers. Mr. Sifton said prosecutors completely failed to muster evidence, including military case law, to show that Colonel Jordan, even if he did not participate in or know about abuses, was, as a senior officer at Abu Ghraib, responsible for abuses that occurred there.

“The prosecutors did not seem to understand the concept of command responsibility as a legal issue,” Mr. Sifton said, adding that other military officers, not just Colonel Jordan, should have been brought to trial for their roles in commanding detention operations in which detainees were abused.

    Colonel Is Acquitted in Abu Ghraib Abuse Case, NYT, 29.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/world/middleeast/29abuse.html?hp

Marine Gets Time Served in Iraqi's Death

August 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:44 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) -- A jury sentenced a Marine corporal Friday to time served and reduced his rank to private for conspiring to murder an Iraqi civilian during a frustrated search for an insurgent.

Cpl. Marshall Magincalda, 24, has already served 448 days in custody and was to be freed Friday.

He was acquitted of murder but also found guilty of larceny and housebreaking, and cleared of making a false official statement.

After the verdict was announced, Magincalda's attorney Joseph Low smiled and patted his client on the back.

Outside the courtroom, Magincalda's mother and grandmother wept as they embraced.

''We can take him home. God answered our prayers,'' his grandmother Wynoma Leesch said.

The Iraqi civilian was pulled from his home in April 2006 and shot in a hole, with an AK-47 and shovel placed nearby to make him look like an insurgent planting a bomb, according to the prosecution.

Prosecutors initially identified the victim as Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52. The name, however, was dropped from charge sheets.

In another Camp Pendleton courtroom, a jury continued deliberating over the sentencing of Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III.

On Thursday, Hutchins became the first and only member of the eight-member squad to be convicted of murder in the killing. He had been charged with premeditated murder but the jury struck the premeditation element, meaning Hutchins no longer faces a mandatory life sentence.

Testimony from several of his comrades pointed to him as being the mastermind of the plot to kidnap and kill the suspected insurgent.

Hutchins, of Plymouth, Mass., was also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, making a false official statement and larceny. He was acquitted of kidnapping, assault and housebreaking.

Sentencing options range from no punishment and no discharge, to life in prison without parole and a dishonorable discharge.

All eight members of the squad were initially charged with murder and kidnapping.

Four lower-ranking Marines and a Navy corpsman cut deals with prosecutors in exchange for their testimony and received sentences ranging from one to eight years in prison.

A jury last month acquitted another corporal of murder but convicted him of conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping. According to testimony, Cpl. Trent Thomas of Madison, Ill., had greater involvement in the killing than Magincalda, of Manteca. Thomas was sentenced to a reduction in rank and a bad-conduct discharge but no prison time.

The squad was pulled from the battlefield after the slaying in Hamdania.

    Marine Gets Time Served in Iraqi's Death, NYT, 3.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Iraq-Shooting.html