Posted on 07/12/2007 6:30:18 PM PDT by RedRover
We’re lucky the IO is LtCol Ware. He isn’t anyone’s fool.
Agreed, Red. He’s no fool and he was fair in Sharratt’s hearing.
Witness Testifies Marine Knowingly Shot Children in Haditha
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., July 17 -- One of the Marines charged with murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005 knew that only women and children were huddled in a back bedroom in a house there, but he opened the door and shot them anyway, a squadmate testified Tuesday.
"I told him, there's women and kids in that room," Lance Cpl. Humberto M. Mendoza said of Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Tatum's response was, "Well, shoot them," Mendoza said.
The statements came in an Article 32 investigation to determine whether Tatum will face a court-martial. It was a day of damaging testimony by his Marine comrades, who portrayed Tatum as eager to kill innocent bystanders.
Tatum, his former squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich and Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt are charged with murder for 24 civilian deaths in Haditha. The investigating officer in Sharratt's case recommended last week that he not face a court-martial for shooting a group of men in a different house that day. Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis will decide how to proceed.
Mendoza's testimony could undermine Tatum's defense and suggests that at least some of the shootings that day purposely targeted unarmed civilians. His attorney argues that Tatum responded appropriately to a deadly threat because the Marines were in the midst of a complex insurgent attack. A Marine in their squad had just been killed by a roadside bomb, and under the rules of engagement, Marines can legally defend themselves in hostile situations.
Tatum's attorney Jack B. Zimmerman told the court that a 13-year-old survivor in the back room said the shooter was shorter than she was. Mendoza is 5 feet 4 inches tall, while Tatum is 6-foot-2. Zimmerman asked why Mendoza had not offered this version of events when initially questioned by investigators. He suggested that Mendoza, a Venezuelan citizen, was worried that he could lose the chance to become a U.S. citizen.
Previously, Tatum told investigators that he determined the house was hostile because he saw Wuterich firing inside and then followed suit.
In a courtroom on this seaside military base, Tatum, 26, leaned forward as Mendoza, testifying under immunity, pointed at a large diagram of an Iraqi house where his squad killed men, women and children on Nov. 19, 2005.
Mendoza said that he did not feel threatened in the house, even though he killed two men as the squad moved through the area clearing homes. In the second house they entered, Mendoza said, he stayed in the kitchen while the rest of the team moved inside. After several minutes of quiet, Mendoza said he ventured down a hall to a room with a closed door.
Inside, he found a bed with two women and four or five children on it. "They were scared," Mendoza said. He backed out of the room and told Tatum what he found. But Tatum told him to shoot the women and children, Mendoza testified.
"Was he joking?" asked prosecutor Lt. Col. Paul Atterbury. "He was very serious," Mendoza said.
Tatum then entered the room, Mendoza said. Mendoza heard rifle fire and later saw all of the occupants dead, he said.
Another squad member, Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, testified under immunity Tuesday that Tatum left a telling signature on a gift to the parents of the Marine killed by the roadside bomb. All the squad members signed a pack the young man had owned, he said. Near Tatum's signature were 24 hatch marks -- the number of civilians killed at Haditha -- and an inscription reading, "This one's for you."
Zimmerman suggested that the inscription referred to a rosary Tatum attached to the pack.
Testimony: Marine killed women, children in Haditha dwelling
CAMP PENDLETON – Lance Cpl. Humberto Mendoza entered a bedroom in an Iraqi house that he and three other Marines had just stormed.
He saw nothing but fear: A woman, a teenage girl and four or five children stared at him wide-eyed. No men or guns were in sight.
Mendoza turned around and headed toward the kitchen. He passed Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, who was striding toward the same bedroom while carrying his M-16.
"I told him there's just womans and kids in that room," Mendoza testified Tuesday before a hushed courtroom at Camp Pendleton during a pretrial hearing for Tatum.
"He replied, 'Well, shoot them,'" Mendoza recalled.
Tatum then went into the bedroom by himself, and moments later there was a "big noise" in there, Mendoza said – perhaps a grenade explosion or rifle fire.
The Marines moved on to other dwellings minutes after the commotion. It was Nov. 19, 2005, in the city of Haditha.
Hours later, Mendoza returned to the bedroom on a body-retrieval mission.
"I found all the womans and kids dead," he testified.
Mendoza's account was offered under a grant of immunity and vigorously challenged by Tatum's attorneys. It highlighted the second day of a hearing to determine whether Tatum should stand trial in the Haditha incident.
Tatum and two other Camp Pendleton Marines are accused of executing 24 Iraqis as revenge for a roadside bomb that damaged their convoy and killed a fellow Marine. Tatum is charged with two counts of unpremeditated murder and four counts of negligent homicide.
Also, four officers are accused of failing to adequately investigate the Haditha incident.
Mendoza's testimony contrasted starkly with any previously heard account of the killings. That's because he fabricated it to win a deal that saves him from prosecution and possible deportation to his native Venezuela, defense attorney Jack Zimmerman suggested.
During cross-examination, Mendoza acknowledged that he had given different statements to an Army colonel who probed the killings and then to agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
He said those statements were lies designed to shield his fellow Marines from prosecution.
Mendoza testified that he changed his story earlier this year after his lawyers urged him to tell the truth and after he received immunity. At the time, he said, no one had told him that his citizenship application could be canceled if he were charged with a crime and that he could be deported if he were convicted.
Mendoza also admitted to shooting two unarmed men during the alleged rampage in Haditha.
The first man was killed as he opened the door to his house after hearing Marines knocking. The second man died after he peeked around the side of a kitchen door in a different home.
Zimmerman suggested that both killings violated the Marines' rules of engagement. He also said Mendoza apparently failed a lie detector test given this spring.
Before Mendoza took the stand, Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz testified that Tatum disapproved of how the United States was waging war and wished troops had more leeway to fire their weapons.
Tatum poked fun at Mendoza for seeking permission before shooting and said the war should be fought the way it was during Biblical times, when "you just go in the city and kill every living thing," Dela Cruz recounted.
With Tatum leaning intently forward behind the defense table, Dela Cruz spoke quietly and was repeatedly told to speak up for the court reporter. He said Tatum made the comments to him while they were on duty together in January 2006.
Dela Cruz said after the Haditha bomb blast on Nov. 19, 2005, he saw Tatum enter a nearby home where Marines had found more than $5,000 in U.S. currency. Tatum suggested the money be sent to the family of the lance corporal who had died in the bomb explosion.
"I think he was serious," Dela Cruz testified. Tatum did not take the money in the end.
Lt. Col. Paul Ware is presiding over Tatum's pretrial hearing, which is expectd to continue at least through Friday. He will later recommend whether Tatum should face court-martial. The final decision rests with Lt. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.
bump
Marine Says He Was Ordered to Kill Women, Kids
A Marine charged with murdering two girls and killing several other Iraqis gave orders to shoot into a roomful of children and young women, a squad member testified Tuesday.
Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum then went into the room himself, followed by loud noise that could have been M-16 gunfire or a grenade, said Lance Cpl. Humberto Manuel Mendoza.
"I told him there's just womens and kids in the room," Mendoza said. "He replied, 'Well, shoot them.'"
Mendoza was with Tatum and two other Marines when they went to clear houses in Haditha, Iraq, on Nov. 19, 2005, in the aftermath of a roadside bomb that killed one Marine and wounded two others. Marines killed 24 civilians, resulting in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths to come out of the Iraq war.
A military prosecutor, Lt. Col. Paul Atterbury, asked Mendoza whether he thought it was possible Tatum was joking about shooting the women and children.
"He was very serious, sir," said Mendoza, who testified with a grant of immunity.
Mendoza said he shot a man in the first house the squad entered and believed he was dead. Tatum went into the room where the body lay and fired more shots.
"He said it was to make sure he was dead," Mendoza said.
At the second house, Mendoza said he shot a man as the team went in. He then stayed in the kitchen while squad members threw a grenade and moments later found a woman in her 20s cowering in a back bedroom with four or five children.
Mendoza said he returned to the house later as part of a body retrieval team and saw that the woman and several children were dead from multiple wounds that could have been caused by M-16 fire.
Tatum's attorney, Jack Zimmerman, questioned Mendoza's account, noting that Mendoza initially gave a different version of events to government investigators.
Mendoza, who is among seven Marines given immunity in the case, told investigators in March 2006 he shot at least two men because they were in houses declared hostile.
"I was following my training that all individuals in a hostile house are to be shot," Mendoza told investigators.
Zimmerman brought up a polygraph test Mendoza failed after changing his account of events.
Mendoza replied he was telling the truth, and freely admitted lying initially to protect his fellow Marines.
"You'd lie to protect your fellow Marines, but not to help yourself?" Zimmerman asked.
"Yes," Mendoza said.
Mendoza, a Venezuelan citizen, has an application for U.S. citizenship pending. That application would be denied if he were charged with any crime, he acknowledged. But he said that he had not told any government lawyers about the content of his testimony before he was granted immunity in December 2006, shortly before charges were filed against Tatum and other Marines.
According to a report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service dated May 17, 2006, Tatum told investigators that he shot women and children because "women and kids can hurt you too." He went on to say he later felt remorseful about the incident.
The report describes an interview with Tatum, but it was not signed by the Marine.
In March, Tatum passed a polygraph test, ordered by his lawyers last March and submitted as evidence, in which he said he thought both houses he entered in Haditha were hostile.
Mendoza was the second of Tatum's squad members to testify on the second day of preliminary hearings to determine whether he will be tried for murder.
Also Tuesday, Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz testified that after the deaths Tatum disapproved how the United States was waging war and wished troops had more leeway to shoot.
Tatum poked fun at a squad member who asked permission before shooting and said he thought the war should be fought the way it was in Biblical scriptures, "where you just go in the city and kill every living thing," said Dela Cruz.
With Tatum, 26, leaning intently forward behind the defense table, Dela Cruz spoke quietly and was repeatedly told to speak up for the court reporter. He said Tatum made the comments to him while they were on patrol in January 2006.
Dela Cruz said that he recalled Tatum entering an Iraqi home near the bomb site where Marines had found more than $5,000 in U.S. currency and suggested that the money should be sent to the family of their fallen comrade to pay for a funeral.
"I think he was serious," Dela Cruz said. Tatum did not take the money in the end.
At the opening of Tatum's hearing Monday, his attorney said Tatum believed he was following procedure by confronting a threat with deadly force.
Besides unpremeditated murder of two girls in one house, Tatum is charged with negligent homicide in the deaths of two men, a woman and a young boy. He is also accused of assaulting another boy and a girl. If convicted of murder, he faces up to life in prison.
The squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, is charged with murdering 18 Iraqis. His preliminary hearing is set for Aug. 22.
After the Article 32 investigation, the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding, hearing officer Lt. Col. Paul Ware will recommend whether Tatum should face a court-martial. The final decision rests with Lt. Gen. James Mattis, the general overseeing the case.
Marine: Defendant ordered killings of women, children
CAMP PENDLETON -- A Marine lance corporal accused of killing Iraqi civilians told a buddy to shoot women and children cowering in the back bedroom of a Haditha home, his squad mate testified in a rapt courtroom Tuesday.
"I told him that there's womens and kids in that room," Lance Cpl. Humberto Mendoza said.
"He replied, 'Well, shoot them,' " continued Mendoza, whose native language is not English. "I replied, 'There's just womens and kids. There's no males, no threat, no hostile situation.' "
Mendoza said that when he refused the order, Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum brushed past him and headed into the room himself.
"Next thing I know, I hear a lot of noise in the house," Mendoza said.
Mendoza's testimony came during the second day of an investigative hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to send Tatum to trial for the killings of six Iraqis and the assaults of two others.
Tatum's attorneys flatly dispute the claims from Mendoza, who has acknowledged on the stand that he initially lied to investigators about the incident and did not report the conversation with Tatum for more than a year.
The defendant's lawyers also point to a polygraph test their client passed. Mendoza -- who admitted to killing two unarmed men during the melee -- was granted immunity from prosecution for his testimony.
Prosecutors say Tatum and other Marines stormed homes and killed 24 civilians Nov. 19, 2005, in retaliation for a bombing that shredded a Humvee in their convoy. The bombing killed Lance Cpl. Miguel "TJ" Terrazas and wounded two others.
Attorneys for Tatum and his co-defendants say the Marines were the target of gunfire after the explosion, and ran into the homes to chase their attackers.
On the stand, Mendoza said he did not feel threatened by people in the homes, but was told by squad mates that insurgents were inside.
The Haditha incident is the largest civilian killing case to result in criminal charges since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Five young Iraqi men were shot to death outside a car that pulled up about the time of the explosion; 19 others were killed in nearby homes.
Questioned by lead prosecutor Lt. Col. Paul Atterbury, Mendoza said that shortly after a squad mate tossed a grenade into a bathroom, he opened a bedroom door and found women and children cowering.
They were alive, he said, and scared. And they were looking at him.
Mendoza said he closed the door and told Tatum what he had seen. That's when Tatum ordered him to shoot them.
"Was he joking?" Atterbury asked.
"No sir, he was very serious," Mendoza replied.
Mendoza returned to the home hours later as part of a team assigned to collect bodies.
"I found all of the womens and childrens dead," Mendoza testified. "They got multiple wounds everywhere."
Mendoza, who was a private first class at the time of the Haditha killings, said he did not know whether the sound he heard in the back bedroom was gunfire or a grenade.
Atterbury asked Mendoza whether he had asked Tatum what happened.
"I just didn't want to ask him," Mendoza replied.
"Why didn't you want to ask?" Atterbury said.
"I dunno, sir, I just ..." Mendoza said, not finishing his thought, but sitting silently and looking away.
On Dec. 21, the Marine Corps charged Tatum and three other enlisted men -- Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz and Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich -- with the killings. Marine prosecutors also charged four commanding officers with dereliction of duty for allegedly failing to properly investigate and report what happened.
All of the men have said directly or through their attorneys or family members that they are innocent of any wrongdoing.
Tatum easily passed a polygraph test administered to him earlier this year at the request of his attorneys, according to results submitted as evidence.
The polygraph examiner deemed that Tatum had answered truthfully when he said he did not know there were women and children in the room before he opened fire.
During cross-examination, Mendoza acknowledged that he had failed a polygraph test he took after he changed his version of the events.
Tatum's attorney, Jack Zimmerman, suggested during questioning that a 13-year-old girl who survived the attack in the back bedroom said the first Marine to open fire in the room was shorter than she was. Zimmerman noted Mendoza's height, which is 5 feet 4 inches, and Tatum's height, at about 6 feet 2 inches.
Another of Tatum's squad mates testified that he saw Tatum's signature underneath 24 markings he said he believed signified the number of Iraqi victims. The markings were on an item that had belonged to the slain Terrazas, and was to be sent home to Terrazas' family, Dela Cruz said.
Dela Cruz himself faced homicide charges in the Haditha case, but they were dropped in exchange for immunity from prosecution because he agreed to testify against his squad mates.
Tatum's hearing is scheduled to continue through the rest of the week.
So Mendoza doesn't know the difference between
bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam....
AND
KABOOM!
Riiiiggghhhhttt.... Now we know why he's failing lie detector tests all over the place.
It seems the polygraph exams tend to point out this liar and non liar is a liar, especially since he failed and Tatum passed.
Okay, I say thank Mendoza for his previous service, charge him with perjury
So do I but I'd let the panel on the courts-martial decide the rest and it looks like the outcome would be much the same as yours.
LOL!!! Thanks for that description, xzins. Kind of puts it in perspective. I wish a defense lawyer had done that!
What Mendoza meant to say, was, “What did they die from?.....Oh, yes, that’s what I heard back there!
Dang, I forgot the :-) at the end of post.
Two NCIS agents testified this morning. Our observer at Camp Pendleton wondered how any partially intelligent individual could perceive their testimony as believable. Full of just plain hearsay, and not a good rendition of that.
A 6-year-old Iraqi identified a Marine with an M-16 and a pistol. Not a big gun and a little one, but was exact, M-16. And an uncle went out of the building two different ways.
More later...
Thanks...It’s great to have an observer in the hearing, we’ll get a much better feel for what’s happening.
Answer, somebody is out to get these guys and they will stop at nothing to make it happen.
Cui bono?
"But I'm really telling the truth this time."
And he failed a lie detector test. Mendoza has absolutely no credibility.
"You'd lie to protect your fellow Marinesyourself, but not to help yourselfyour fellow Marines?" Zimmerman asked.
The incident with the cash goes to Cpl. Tatum's credibility. It's an honorable thing to do.
Excellent question. Some have suggested we have ourselves a Breaker Morant-style case where a deal was made with Maliki government.
Strangely enough, the Iraqi ambassador to the US, Samir al- Sumaidaie, went on CNN (two weeks after Murtha did his thing in May 06) and claimed Marines had killed his cousin in Haditha--though not in the same incident.
Here's a bit of the interview which I just find very strange.
BLITZER: What do you know about what happened at Haditha?
AL-SUMAIDAIE: Well, I heard the report very soon after the event in November from some relatives. And as it happened, my own security detail comes from that neighborhood. And his home is hardly a hundred yards from the home which was hit.
And he was in touch through the Internet with his folks and neighbors. And the situation which he reported to me was that it was a cold-blooded killing.
BLITZER: By who?
AL-SUMAIDAIE: By the Marines, I believe. Now, at that time, I dismissed the initial reports as incredible. I found it unbelievable, frankly.
BLITZER: You were at the United Nations then?
AL-SUMAIDAIE: I was at the United Nations, and I found it unbelievable that the Marines would go in and kill members of a family who had nothing to do with combat. But I was under pressure by my friends and relatives to raise this issue.
Without any evidence in my hand, I didn't really want to make any claims that I could not substantiate. That was, remember, before any video came out. It was just word of mouth, people telling me what happened. And I know the power of the rumor and the power of allegations without foundation. But in this case, it was more than that.
BLITZER: Well, you didn't raise it?
AL-SUMAIDAIE: I did not raise it. I noted it. But I did not raise it. I raised it unofficially by -- through private conversations.
BLITZER: But even months before the incident in November, you lost a cousin at Haditha in a separate battle involving United States Marines.
AL-SUMAIDAIE: Well, that was not a battle at all. Marines were doing house-to-house searches, and they went into the house of my cousin. He opened the door for them.
His mother, his siblings were there. He led them into the bedroom of his father. And there he was shot.
BLITZER: Who shot him?
AL-SUMAIDAIE: A member of the Marines.
BLITZER: Why did they shoot him?
AL-SUMAIDAIE: Well, they said that they shot him in self- defense. I find that hard to believe because, A, he is not at all a violent -- I mean, I know the boy. He was a second year engineering course in the university. Nothing to do with violence. All his life has been studies and intellectual work.
Totally unbelievable. And, in fact, they had no weapon in the house. They had one weapon which belonged to the school where his father was a headmaster. And it had no ammunition in it. And he led them into the room to show it to them.
BLITZER: So what you're suggesting, your cousin was killed in cold blood, is that what you're saying, by United States Marines?
AL-SUMAIDAIE: I believe he was killed intentionally. I believe that he was killed unnecessarily. And unfortunately, the investigations that took place after that sort of took a different course and concluded that there was no unlawful killing.
I would like further investigation. I have, in fact, asked for the report of the last investigation, which was a criminal investigation, by the way.
General Casey is aware of all the details, because he's kept on top of it. And it was he who rejected the conclusions of the first investigation. I have since asked formally for the report, but it's been nearly two months and I have not received it.
BLITZER: Did you raise these concerns you had with the president today when you were at the White House presenting your credentials?
AL-SUMAIDAIE: No, I did not, because I did not want to bring a personal note into a much wider brief that I have here.
I'm not endorsing the idea of a Breaker Morant style deal between the Bush Administration and the Iraqis but it is a possibility.
Totally unbelievable. And, in fact, they had no weapon in the house. They had one weapon which belonged to the school where his father was a headmaster. And it had no ammunition in it. And he led them into the room to show it to them.
Those darn Iraqis! Never can seem to get their stories straight.
Do they teach critical thinking anymore? Gawd, I could shoot a wad.
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