Attorney says completed autopsy provides no showing man was bound

A completed autopsy report for an Iraqi man alleged to have been killed by a group of Camp Pendleton troops in April lacks conclusive evidence that the man's hands and feet were bound as the government alleges, an attorney for one of the defendants said Tuesday.

The lack of that finding, however, may be a result of decomposition of the body, which was exhumed for examination several weeks after the man was buried in Iraq.

The autopsy report, provided to attorney Joseph Casas and other defense attorneys Tuesday, concludes that Hashim Ibrahim Awad died from a homicide, he said.

Casas, who represents Pfc. John Jodka, declined to provide a copy of the report, citing legal reasons.

"We could move to suppress the report (in the trial)," Casas said, "then I would be potentially shooting myself in the foot if I say what is in there."

As for evidence of binding of Awad's hands and feet, Casas said the report stated there was no evidence of hemorrhaging or other injury that might be found if the accused men had tied up the 52-year-old man with plastic cuffs or other restraints, as the government has alleged.

But the report also hedges on the issue, Casas said, because it then quickly states that Awad's body was in a state of decomposition.

Awad's body was exhumed in June and examined at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Last week military officials said the body had been returned to Hamdania and reburied.

Casas said the fact that Awad's body has been reburied could harm the defense because pathologists for the defense could only offer an opinion on the report done by the government's pathologist.

"It's one thing to review government's report, another to have a hands-on analysis of the body," he said.

Casas said that, in his layman's interpretation of the report, the number of bullet wounds that hit Awad could not be determined. The Marine Corps contends the men conspired to kidnap, kill and then cover up the circumstances of Awad's death.

In charging documents, the government alleges that Awad was shot multiple times by five members of a unit from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment based at Camp Pendleton. The men are awaiting hearings to determine if the charges against them will move forward.

Other defense attorneys contacted Tuesday said they, too, had received the report but had not had a chance to review it.

In addition to Jodka, the accused are Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, 22; Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, 24; Cpl. Marshall Magincalda, 23; Hospitalman 3rd Class Melson J. Bacos, 20; Lance Cpls. Tyler A. Jackson, 22, Robert B. Pennington, 22, and Jerry Shumate, 20.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/218vnicq.asp

PRECISELY A MONTH AGO, on April 8, the Palestinian news agency Wafa was reporting that Israel had committed the "massacre of the 21st century" in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin. "Medical sources" informed Wafa of "hundreds of martyrs." This was a lie, concocted not only for local consumption--to keep the Palestinian people whipped up in a patriotic, Israel-hating frenzy--but mostly for export to the West.

That same day, you could hear breathless reports of the supposed Israeli atrocities in Jenin being spread by Palestinian sources on NPR, [PLA=HAMAS=HEZBOLLAH=Al-Quiada]CNN, and elsewhere. Typical was the hysteria of Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian representative to the United Nations, on CNN: "There's almost a massacre now taking place in Jenin. Helicopter gun ships are throwing missiles at one square kilometer packed with almost 15,000 people in a refugee camp. . . . Just look at the TV and watch, watch what the--what the Israel forces are doing. . . . This is a war crime, clear war crime, witnessed by the whole world, preventing ambulances, preventing people from being buried. I mean this is an all-out assault against the whole population."

No, this was an all-out assault on the truth. There was a pitched battle in Jenin. But the "hundreds" of martyrs were a cynical invention. The death toll was 56 Palestinians, the majority of them combatants, and 23 Israeli soldiers.

Unlike the celebrated foreign-dispatch lies of the 20th century--the New York Times's Walter Duranty Pulitzer-winning cover-up of Stalin's murderous Ukraine famine, say, or Herbert Matthews's 1957 reports
of Senor Fidel Castro's hopes for a "democratic Cuba"--the Jenin fraud has been almost entirely inflated and then deflated in the short space of a month. I think it's safe to say that no one will win a Pulitzer for reporting on the (non-existent) "massacre of the 21st century." This was amateur-hour propaganda, and any reporter who fell for it should be mortified.

Mostly that means British reporters. Full credit to the Guardian for allowing Sharon Sadeh to administer a well-deserved flogging to Fleet Street in its pages on Monday. "The Independent, the Guardian and the Times, in particular," writes Sadeh, "were quick to denounce Israel and made sensational accusations based on thin evidence, fitting a widely held stereotype of a defiant, brutal and don't-give-a-damn Israel." You can read the whole satisfying piece here.

Not that American reporters were without sin. Screenwriter Daniel Gordan's description of the ax-grinding media in action is also worth a click. My favorite part is his description of this encounter between CNN's Sheila MacVicar and an Israeli soldier in Jenin:

"One [Israeli] reservist sensed MacVicar's hostility. He was a soft-spoken man who approached her and introduced himself as the reserve unit's medical officer, Dr. David Zangen. He told her that when the fighting was over, they found photograph albums of children from roughly 6 years of age up through early and mid-teens. It was an album of photos of children who would be the next crop of suicide killers, with notations indicating when each of the children would be ripe. The reporter had no time for the doctor, however.

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