Forensics at center of Haditha hearing [LCpl Stephen Tatum]

North County Times ^ | July 19, 2007 | TERI FIGUEROA

[RedRover]

CAMP PENDLETON -- A pathologist testified in a Camp Pendleton courtroom Thursday that, with no bodies to look at, she relied on death scene photos to figure out how Iraqis, including young children, died at the hands of Marines in Haditha in 2005.

The pictures provided to her were far less than ideal for such analysis, with the victims still dressed and their wounds not always visible, acknowledged Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the forensic pathologist and medical examiner asked to determine how the victims had died.

"The photographs were all that was available," Rouse testified. Families of the dead refused to let investigators exhume the bodies. Rouse's testimony came on the fourth day of an investigative hearing to determine if Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum should face trial for his role in the deaths of 24 Iraqis in the city of Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005.

Many of the photos Rouse reviewed were taken by Marines documenting the battle scene and taking pictures of the faces of the dead to determine if any were known or suspected insurgents.

The photos were not taken to document wounds of the victims, nor were they done for a possible criminal investigation.

The testimony of Rouse and that of a government investigator brought forensic science to center stage at Tatum's hearing.

The investigator, Special Agent Thomas Brady with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said he pieced together what may have happened in the first of four homes U.S. troops stormed moments after a roadside bomb killed a Marine.

According to his testimony, Brady determined it was possible that a 4-year-old boy may have been deliberately executed by a killer standing over him while the child cowered, based on the location of the boy's wounds.

But Tatum's attorney, Jack Zimmerman, said photographs suggested it was much more likely that the boy had been huddled at a woman's bosom when the Marines burst into the room and sprayed it with gunfire after first tossing in a grenade.

Brady testified that a trip to the home four months after the attack did not yield much physical evidence. The home had been repaired and repainted.

Prosecutors contend that Camp Pendleton-based Marines raided four homes and killed Iraqis in retaliation for the death of Lance Cpl. Miguel "TJ" Terrazas and the wounding of two others in the convoy.

Tatum and his co-defendants maintain they were the target of enemy gunfire after the explosion and ran into the homes in pursuit of their attackers.

The killings in Haditha grabbed international headlines and became the largest war crimes prosecution to arise out of the U.S. occupation of Iraq since it invaded that country in 2003.

[Meanwhile, in the Hamdania case...]

Camp Pendleton is also the site of hearings this week into an unrelated war crimes case out of Hamdania, Iraq. In that case, eight local troops were charged with kidnapping and killing an Iraqi man.

On Thursday, attorneys for Cpl. Marshall Magincalda, one of the Marines accused in the Hamdania case, lost their bid to argue that the victim was a wanted Iraqi insurgent and not a disabled, retired policeman, as prosecutors have said.

Judge Lt. Col. Eugene Robinson will allow prosecutors to remove the man's name from the charges, effectively blocking defense attorneys from challenging who the victim really was, and whether he was a known insurgent.

[Girlene]

Thanks for the explanation. Sounds like a good movie with a great plot twist.