Pentagon: Probe Backs Haditha Charges
Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.
Agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service have completed their initial work on the incident last November, but may be asked to probe further as Marine Corps and Navy prosecutors review the evidence and determine whether to recommend criminal charges, according to two Pentagon officials who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.
The decision on whether to press criminal charges ultimately will be made by the commander of the accused Marines' parent unit, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif. That currently is Lt. Gen. John Sattler, but he is scheduled to move to a Pentagon assignment soon; his successor will be Lt. Gen. James Mattis.
Investigators conducted a wide range of interviews but did not obtain permission to exhume the bodies of the 24 who were killed, one official said.
NCIS officials who spoke to CBS News said they still have several weeks of work to do. Evidence has been gathered from photos taken by the Marines themselves and from forensic evidence, "as much as you can get five months after the fact."
The officials said NCIS has conducted "tons and tons of interviews" — everyone in the Marine unit, people who were there, people who ran away. Some 45 to 50 NCIS agents have been involved in the investigation.
Meanwhile, in ongoing violence in Iraq, 14 young Iraqis were killed when explosions hit two soccer fields in Baghdad on Wednesday. Eleven were killed by hidden, homemade bombs in the western part of the city. Police said the dead ranged in age from 15 to 25. Fourteen others were injured in the blast.
In a separate incident, police reported three people under the age of 15 were killed when a mortar shell hit a soccer field in a residential neighborhood.
In other developments:
The Haditha case is one of several involving alleged unjustified killings of Iraqi civilians that have emerged this year, damaging the military's reputation for humane treatment of civilians and triggering calls by some Iraqi leaders to end the arrangement under which U.S. troops are immune from prosecution by Iraqi authorities.
The Marines initially reported after the Nov. 19, 2005 killings at Haditha that 15 Iraqi civilians had been killed by a makeshift roadside bomb and in crossfire between Marines and insurgent attackers. Based on accounts from survivors and human rights groups, Time magazine first reported in March that the killings were deliberate acts by the Marines.
A criminal investigation was then ordered by the top Marine commander in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer.
A parallel investigation is examining whether officers in the Marines' chain of command tried to cover up the events. The probe, which has not been made public, faults some officers for failing to pursue obvious discrepancies in the initial reports about what happened in Haditha and for not launching an early investigation.
Public attention on the Haditha case grew after Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a former Marine, asserted publicly on May 17 that he had learned from Marine Corps officials that innocent Iraqis had been killed "in cold blood."
Lawyers for Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, one of the Marines under investigation, argue in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court that Murtha falsely accused Wuterich of murder and war crimes. The suit maintains that Pentagon officials "who have briefed or leaked information to Mr. Murtha deliberately provided him with inaccurate and false information" and that the congressman subsequently "has made repeated statements .... that are defamatory" to Wuterich and his fellow Marines.
Among the other cases of alleged deliberate killings of Iraqi civilians, seven Marines and one Navy corpsman have been charged with premeditated murder and other criminal acts in connection with the killing of an Iraqi man in Hamdania on April 26. Also, five soldiers and a former soldier have been charged in the March 12 rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman and the killings of her relatives in Mahmoudiya.
In yet another case, a U.S. soldier testified Wednesday that four of his colleagues accused of murdering three Iraqis during a raid near Samarra threatened to kill him if he told anyone about the May 9 shooting deaths.
Pfc. Bradley Mason, speaking at a hearing to determine whether the four must stand trial, also said that their brigade commander, a veteran of the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" battle in Somalia, told troops hunting insurgents to "kill all of them." Mason is not one of the accused.
In other violence Wednesday, police found 11 bullet-riddled bodies, showing signs of torture, in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, police Lt. Fikrat Mohammed Hussein said.
Ten other people were killed or found dead Wednesday in Iraq. That followed a wave of bombings and shootings Tuesday that killed more than 70.