Posted on 04/28/2005 2:36:01 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — A key witness in the case against a Marine officer accused of murdering two Iraqi civilians was abruptly taken off the stand Wednesday, accused of giving interviews.
Marine Sgt. Daniel Coburn was testifying at a hearing against 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano when the investigating officer, Maj. Mark E. Winn, read Coburn his rights and told him he was suspected of violating orders from superior officers.
Defense attorneys had cross-examined Coburn about interviews he has given. Coburn said he had been told he was allowed to defend his character.
The focus on Coburn brought to a temporary halt an Article 32 hearing to determine whether Pantano should face a court-martial in the April 2004 shooting deaths of two men who were being searched outside a suspected terrorist hideout in Iraq.
Prosecutors say the shootings were murder. Pantano, a 33-year-old former Wall Street trader who rejoined the Marines after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has said he acted in self-defense, thinking the men were about to attack him.
Earlier, Coburn testified that he was present when Pantano opened fire on the two men after ordering a search of the car they had driven away from the suspected hideout.
He said Pantano was agitated because a superior officer had ordered him to release the men when nothing was found in initial searches of their car.
Ordered to scan the nearby area for threats, Coburn said he was looking away from the men when he heard shots.
Earlier, Navy corpsman George Gobles, who was present at the shooting, testified that he found it strange that Pantano ordered the Iraqi men to search the car again after initial searches turned up nothing.
The hearing, similar to a civilian grand jury, will help determine whether Pantano will face a court-martial. If convicted of murder, Pantano could face the death penalty.
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Lt. Pantano's trial enters second day
CAMP LEJEUNE -- A key prosecution witness in a Marine's murder investigation left the stand Wednesday asking for his own lawyer after an officer warned that his interviews about the case could get him charged also. The second day of a Marine Corps hearing into accusations that 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano, 33, shot two Iraqi detainees in the back was a tough one for the prosecution, with another witness spending much of his testimony lauding the defendant's leadership. Lawyers for Pantano, a former Goldman Sachs trader and film company executive, have said he acted in self defense when he thought the two suspected insurgents were threatening him on April 15, 2004. The case has generated nationwide attention, with bloggers, conservative radio hosts and others saying it's wrong to prosecute a Marine for doing his job in a war zone. Sgt. Daniel L. Coburn, Pantano's main accuser and former radio operator, said Wednesday that he triggered the investigation when a Marine he talked to weeks after the killings passed his story up the chain of command. But Coburn admitted under withering questioning from Pantano's civilian attorney that five times he had violated orders not to talk to reporters about the case, after first claiming he hadn't. The lawyer, Charles Gittins, also suggested in court that Coburn might have committed perjury during his testimony. Because Coburn was giving evidence that could be used to charge him, Maj. Mark E. Winn, who was presiding over the evidentiary hearing, read Gittins his rights and asked whether he needed an attorney. Coburn said yes. Gittins used Coburn's admissions of wrongdoing to question his reliability as a witness. "Everybody sitting in that courtroom knows that the problems with the testimony were profound," Gittins said later. He said Coburn had twisted the story of the shootings in revenge for Pantano's demoting him to the radio operator job. A Marine spokesman said it was unclear whether Coburn will complete his testimony. Coburn and another prosecution witness Wednesday, Navy medic George A. Gobles, were the two U.S. troops closest to Pantano when he killed the Iraqis. Gobles, like Coburn, told the court that he didn't think the killings were justified but repeatedly described Pantano as a model officer, one to whom he looked up. Pantano was interested in his Marines' welfare, trained his platoon harder than any other in the battalion, and proved himself a cool, competent commander in at least a dozen firefights. "He's a damn good leader," Gobles said. The incident began when Marines got a report that insurgents were holding a family in a house in Mahmudiyah hostage so they could use the yard to fire mortars at a Marine camp. As Marines approached the house, two men came out, got into a small white four-door sedan and began driving slowly away, Coburn said. Marines shouted for the car to stop and when it didn't, fired warning shots. The driver stopped. Two men were pulled out, and Coburn searched the vehicle twice. Pantano then ordered Gobles to cut the plastic "flexcuffs" off the men so that they could search their own vehicle and told Coburn and Gobles to take up positions guarding the area, which meant they would have to face away. Both men said they heard Pantano say "stop" in Arabic and then again in English, before a long burst of fire. Coburn estimated that Pantano fired a full magazine -- 30 rounds -- from his M-16 rifle, then changed magazines and fired about 30 more. Gobles said he turned when he heard the first shots and saw Pantano shooting the men in the back. He testified that the men had been crouching, one in the driver's door, the other in the rear driver's side door. The bodies of both men came to rest partway inside their respective doors, the witnesses said. Coburn and Gobles said they were surprised by the shooting and that Coburn had asked the medic: "What the hell just happened?" Gobles replied that he shouldn't worry, the blood wasn't on Coburn's hands, according to both men. Several witnesses have testified that Pantano posted a sign over the bodies bearing a Marine slogan: "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy." He later removed the sign. Minutes after the shooting, another car approached the scene, and Pantano ordered the five occupants out and had them walk past the dead men, the witnesses said. A translator testified that Pantano had him tell the men that if they joined the insurgency, they would meet the same fate. He then allowed the men, who were covered in paint and said they'd been painting a nearby house, to drive away, but as they started to leave, Pantano bent and jammed his knife into one of their tires. Witnesses said that troops later searched the house the dead men had just left and found pro-Osama bin Laden and pro-Saddam Hussein propaganda, three loaded assault rifles, bulletproof vests, several pieces of identification that didn't belong to anyone in the house and a stake used for aiming a mortar. The hearing continues today. Winn might not make a recommendation on whether to court-martial Pantano for weeks. Staff writer Jay Price can be reached at 829-4526 or jprice@newsobserver.com
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Regardless of his justification, looks like he shot the right guys.
Probably won't help him if he can't show good cause.
Odd war.
WTF!!!!
"Witnesses said that troops later searched the house the dead men had just left and found pro-Osama bin Laden and pro-Saddam Hussein propaganda, three loaded assault rifles, bulletproof vests, several pieces of identification that didn't belong to anyone in the house and a stake used for aiming a mortar."
and they are charging him !!
In other discussions of this purported Marines say the issue maybe that he had them taken out of their restraints to search their own vehicle which was against standing orders. I guess we shall see.
SEMPER FI LT
It is an odd war. That is what happens when you expect combat soldiers to act like cops in a war zone.
That is the point that I was trying to make in rather oblique way.......
I know, I was just trying to help you out. Great minds think a like.
Yeah, it's what happens when people expect us to fight a 'clean war' while in the midst of treacherous sub-humans....it makes for 'dirty'/guilty soldiers. (a fact that hasn't gone unnoticed by the enemy)
BTW.... I'm NOT referring to the Iraqi's. I'm talking about those who use the Iraqi's as a cover/to blend into.
If it happened as it appears, then once the two were cuffed, Pantano no longer had a battlefied situation, he had POWs. Executions, especially for purposes of intimidation of others is simply not part of any strategy I've worked with. I hope it's not true, but if so, then a general court martial is more than warranted.
I understand what you meant.
These 'men' would gladly die to get any American dead, dead, dead....They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
We know that as truth, because 'we' were around for 9/11. And that filthy ideology has NOT been stopped nor has it died out.
There are still way too many Clintonistas in the military.
I had to add that 'FWIW disclaimer' because FR has 'members' who NEED it.
"We acquitted the sergeant in about fifteen minutes. (Fourteen of those minutes were spent on procedural issues.) Oh, how we wished we could have grabbed that private by his pencil neck and given him what for!
I thought the same thing when I read that there were no witnesses to the shooting. The LT is a former enlisted Marine and that can be a neverending pain in the axx for an underperforming NCO. I wonder if there was friction from the LT being in this SGT's skivvies all the time?
Finally, once the hajiis were restrained they are detainees, POW's perhaps and should never be cut loose while the battlefield is in flux. Since they are detainees he is responsible for their safety, you never allow detainees to re-enter the engagement.
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