Accounts differ on Haditha slayings
San Diego Union Tribune, June 13, 2007
Prosecutors and defense attorneys yesterday sketched sharply contrasting versions of what happened Nov. 19, 2005, the day Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt killed three brothers in Haditha, Iraq.
The accounts emerged during the second day of a pretrial hearing at Camp Pendleton to help decide whether Sharratt should face court-martial.
“One scenario describes what appears to be a proper application of force,” Lt. Col. Paul Ware, the Marine lawyer presiding over the hearing, said during questioning of a witness. “The other, taken at face value, amounts to an execution.”
Sharratt is charged with three counts of unpremeditated murder for shooting Jasib, Kahtan, and Jamal Aiad Ahmed. The leader of his squad, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, allegedly executed a fourth Ahmed brother.
Wuterich attended yesterday's hearing, as did Sharratt's parents, Darryl and Theresa Sharratt of Canonsburg, Pa.
The Ahmeds were among two dozen Iraqis killed during the Haditha incident. In all, the deaths took place over several hours after a roadside bomb struck a convoy carrying members of Wuterich's platoon, killing one Marine and wounding two others.
Sharratt, Wuterich and a third enlisted Marine from Camp Pendleton could be sentenced to life in prison for their actions that day. In addition, four officers are accused of not properly investigating the killings.
Yesterday's witnesses included Mark Platt and Nayda Mannle, special agents for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The agents interviewed the Ahmed brothers' wives and children in late March and early April 2006.
Through a translator, the Iraqis told Platt and Mannle how several Marines came to their two-house compound, separated four men from the women and children, marched the men into a bedroom and killed them.
Defense attorneys yesterday pointed to statements from Sharratt and two other Marines indicating that they had heard small-arms fire from one of the Ahmed houses. When the Marines burst into the bedroom in question, according to the statements, they found several men pointing rifles at them and had no choice but to shoot first.
During his time on the stand, Platt described finding blood stains in the doorway, on the walls and on furniture inside the bedroom. He also testified about seeing bullet fragments that seemed to come from U.S. military weapons.
Mannle said the Ahmed family members' accounts seemed consistent and truthful.
Sharratt's attorneys hammered at what they viewed as omissions and shortcomings by the naval investigators. During cross-examination, Mannle acknowledged that Sharratt had passed a polygraph exam concerning whether any of the Ahmed brothers pointed a rifle at him.
She also said time constraints prompted by the extreme danger to foreigners in Haditha prevented her from separating the Ahmed family members before questioning them, which is standard procedure in crime investigations.
In addition, Mannle confirmed that Marines seized several AK-47 rifles and a suitcase allegedly containing Jordanian passports from the Ahmed compound the day of the killings. She said her agency wasn't able to track down these items, which might have linked the Ahmed brothers to insurgent activity.
New York Times, June 13, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., June 12 — Two naval investigators testified at a military hearing here on Tuesday that their inquiry into allegations that marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005 was hampered by insurgent bombs and gunfire as well as the absence of basic equipment like tape recorders.
Nayda Mannle, a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said she had conducted a hurried group interview of six relatives of the men killed three months earlier, rapidly jotting notes of the translation of their overlapping responses as American troops stood outside, ready to fend off any attack by enemy fighters.
Another N.C.I.S. agent, Mark Platt, said he could not complete one interview of Iraqi witnesses in Haditha because the conversation was “cut short by small-arms fire.”
The testimony came in a hearing to weigh evidence against Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt, one of three enlisted men in Company K, Third Battalion, First Marines, who are charged with murder in the killings of Iraqi civilians in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005.
Corporal Sharratt, 22, of Canonsburg, Pa., was charged with unpremeditated murder in the shooting of three of the four men that he and another marine encountered during a search of a home, two hours after a roadside bomb killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas.
The two agents were among government investigators assigned to collect forensic evidence — like shell casings and blood samples — and interview Iraqi relatives of the 24 people killed in Haditha.
Ms. Mannle, the special agent, said her team arrived at the Marine base near Haditha in March 2006. Marines who escorted the team members to the scene told them they would have only about an hour to conduct interviews and collect evidence.
When the convoy approached the home where four men had been killed, Ms. Mannle recalled, she heard women inside scream in fear. Because of time and security concerns, she said, she had interviewed six family members at once, gathering testimony that would form the case against Corporal Sharratt.
James D. Culp, a civilian lawyer defending Corporal Sharratt, suggested that group interviews had been “contradictory to everything you have been taught.” Ms. Mannle said she did not have time to conduct separate interviews or review her notes before the marines said it was time to leave.
She did not record the interview, she said, because she could not find a recorder, but when pressed by Mr. Culp, she said she never sought to buy one from the post exchange.
An N.C.I.S. spokesman, Ed Buice, said in an e-mail message that no federal law enforcement agency regularly taped interviews.
As the marines hustled investigators from the home, a roadside bomb blew up nearby, Ms. Mannle said.