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.
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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.