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bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
December 21, 2006
Who Will Pay For Haditha?
by Mark Weisenmiller
With charges expected to be filed Thursday against five to eight Marines
accused of killing 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq on Nov. 19, 2005, it
now appears that at least one senior officer will also be charged in the case.
The attorney for Capt. Lucas McConnell, who was not present at the alleged
massacre but was the commander of the Marines under investigation, said
Tuesday that his client had been informed that he will be charged with
dereliction of duty.
The others facing imminent charges ranging from negligent homicide to
murder were all in the third platoon of Company K, Third Battalion, Fourth
Marine Regiment. They are currently restricted to the grounds of the Marine
base in Camp Pendleton, California..
Eugene Fidell, founder and president of the National Institute of Military
Justice, told IPS that "such high-ranking military officers in these types
of cases rarely face charges. They tend to get hammered in other ways. They
tend to lose a rank or lose their pensions or drop a pay grade."
According to the group Human Rights First, no civilian official or officer
above the rank of major responsible for interrogation and detention
practices has ever been charged in connection with the torture or
abuse-related death of a detainee in U.S. custody.
The Haditha case is somewhat different as it involves an alleged massacre
of families in their own homes, but experts say it shares similar themes of
accountability.
"It's clear that the military has a long track record of not holding
responsible military officers who either knew of the types of crimes that
may have been committed at Haditha, or actually participated in the crimes
themselves, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, since the 'war on terror' began,"
said John Sifton, a researcher and attorney with Human Rights Watch in New
York.
"If you look at the overall record, at the total number of officers who
have been found guilty in courts-martial on charges in these types of
cases, the number is very minimal," he told IPS.
"When officers fail to stop their soldiers from committing abuses of
civilians, or know that such crimes are going to be committed before they
actually occur, they should stop them. That's called command responsibility."
Gary Solis of the Georgetown Law Center, who has contacts with the myriad
attorneys involved in the Haditha case, told IPS last week that, "The
filing of the charges, which could happen any day now, indicate that the
NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) investigation is over."
A retired Marine who served two tours in Vietnam and wrote the official
Marine Corps history of involvement in that war, Solis also taught law at
the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York for 10 years.
"I personally know three of the attorneys (that are working on the Haditha
case) and can vouch that all three are outstanding attorneys," Solis said.
The tragic chain of events began in the local morning hours of Nov. 19,
2005, when a roadside bomb in Haditha killed Marine Lance Corporal Miguel
Terrazas, a 20-year-old from El Paso, Texas, along with 19 Iraqi civilians.
What may have followed is something many press reports have dubbed "Iraq's
My Lai," a reference to the March 1968 massacre of Vietnamese civilians by
U.S. soldiers that generated worldwide outrage and led to even greater
public disenchantment with the U.S.. involvement in Vietnam.
Following the death of Terrazas, a squad of Company K Marines, led by
26-year-old Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, allegedly went on a rampage,
methodically shooting 24 Iraqi civilians who lived not far from the scene
of the explosion. Fifteen of those shot were women and children, and
another was a wheelchair-bound elderly man.
Since the widely-publicized Army court-martial in 1969 of Lt. William
Calley, the officer in charge of the soldiers who murdered the Vietnamese
men, women and children, and who was found guilty of premeditated murder
for the killings on Mar. 29, 1971, an issue in such cases has been the role
of senior military officers.
"I think that the basic idea of accountability for we as Americans is that
if you're part of a conspiracy, then you can be held legally accountable
for your actions. That applies to both the civilian courts and the military
justice system," said Mike Marchand, who was an assistant judge advocate
for the U.S. Army at the Pentagon for three years.
"It appears that (the accused Marines in Haditha incident) may have acted
without direct orders from their higher-ranking officers, at least from
everything that I've read and heard about the Haditha case," he said.
"What I see emerging in the (American) military justice system," noted
Jeffrey Addicott, a law professor at St. Mary's University in San Antonio,
Texas, "particularly at Abu Ghraib, is that if you know a crime is
occurring, or if you know that it's going to happen, then you are going to
face charges, and that may also apply with the Haditha case, depending on
the results of the NCIS investigation."
Addicott was an Army officer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps for 20
years. His reference to Abu Ghraib deals with the 2004 revelations of
torture of Iraqi detainees by U.S. civilian and military personnel at the
Iraqi prison complex.
Both the My Lai and Abu Ghraib stories came to light through the diligence
of reporter Seymour Hersh. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his
work on the My Lai case, and wrote a long piece exposing the atrocities
committed at Abu Ghraib for the New Yorker magazine.
In his coverage of My Lai, Hersh detailed how the Army tried to conceal Lt.
Calley's crimes. Hersh wrote two books about the case,
<http://www.amazon.com/My-Lai-Report-Massacre-Aftermath/dp/0394437373/sr=8-1/qid=1166661616/antiwarbookstore/>My
Lai 4 (1970) and
<http://www.amazon.com/Cover-up-Armys-Secret-Investigation-Massacre/dp/0394474600/sr=1-1/qid=1166661650/antiwarbookstore/>Cover-Up
(1972).
Addicott told IPS that the U.S. military justice system uses the "Medina
Standard," named after Army Captain Ernest Medina, Lt. Calley's commanding
officer who was also present at the time of the shooting massacre. Both
Medina and his commanding officer, Col. Oran Henderson, were ultimately
acquitted of all charges.
"'The Medina Standard' is the direct proving by prosecutors in court of an
officer, or officers, directly ordering soldiers under their command to do
something that they know is illegal," explained Addicott. "I don't see
possible cover-up charges arising for the officers who were in charge of
the Marines who may be accused of shooting the Iraqi civilians in Haditha."
The Pentagon has been conducting its own inquiry into whether there was a
cover-up by officers higher up in the chain of command. Until the
accusations by witnesses and human rights groups were revealed by Time
magazine in March this year, military officials had claimed that 15
civilians were killed by a roadside bomb planted by insurgents.
They later acknowledged that the death toll was higher and that none of the
civilians were killed by the roadside bomb. It is not known when the report
will be publicly released.
Sifton doubts that what happened at Haditha is an isolated incident.
"You can't stop abuse on a systematic scale with soldiers," he said. "Abuse
is going to happen in wartime. What you can do is to go after officers who
should stop such abuses and know better."
"We think that the problem is that the American military doesn't have an
independent prosecutor. Commanders, who may very well end up facing charges
themselves in some instances, end up making deals with attorneys so as not
to face charges. With an independent prosecutor, that wouldn't happen."
source:
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/weisenmiller.php?articleid=10203
===
-muslim voice-
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