Posted on 09/12/2007 3:37:15 AM PDT by RedRover
The government’s case against a squad of Marines accused of murdering at least four Iraqi insurgents at Fallujah in November 2004 took another twist when the government decided Tuesday to withdraw its charge of unpremeditated murder against Sgt. Jermaine Nelson.
The former assaultman in the beleaguered 3rd Squad, 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company was charged several weeks ago at Camp Pendleton. Marines from the squad are charged in two separate incidents a year apart with murder. The government’s inexplicable and unexplained action dismissing its case against Nelson after he admitted killing a prisoner promises to unleash another battering storm at Camp Pendleton, CA.
Nelson is currently being prosecuted by the same team prosecuting the Haditha incident. Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan is the chief prosecutor against Nelson. Various lawyers speculated that dismissing the case against Nelson Tuesday was merely an administrative matter so jurisdiction can be handed off somewhere else and the charges refiled. The dismissal is said to come without a deal or plea arrangement of any kind.
Lieutenant Colonel M. K. Jamison, a Camp Pendleton SJA, Tuesday morning notified Capt Joseph I Grimm, Nelson’s appointed Marine Corps lawyer, that the charges against Nelson have been withdrawn. At the time of this report it is not clear whether Nelson will be charged again in some other venue, granted immunity and forced to testify, or something else entirely unexpected. All are possibilities, several lawyers agreed. So far nothing about the Fallujah murder investigation has been typical.
At the center of the allegations is much-maligned 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, once a highly regarded, tight-knit unit of fighting Marines who shared uncommon valor.
The United States vs. Mr. Jose M. Nazario and Sergeant Jermaine Nelson cases brought more than a month ago by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service ensured its reputation would remain uncertain. Nazario is charged with two counts of voluntarily manslaughter for intentionally killing two Iraqi prisoners of war. Nelson was charged under military law with unpremeditated murder – a crime of similar magnitude.
The charges were triggered by the revelations of former Corporal Ryan Weemer, an Illinois lad with a powerful conscience. Weemer told his tale to a Secret Service polygraph examiner while seeking employment in the uniformed division of the Secret Service. Eventually his allegations ended up in the hands of the NCIS.
Weemer’s revelations last fall triggered an investigation by NCIS Special Agent Mark O. Fox, a detective with unlimited resources to criss-cross the country for eight months finding witnesses from Fallujah. He continues to pursue the case.
In addition to Nelson, who incriminated himself and several other former squad members, the government has identified at least six witnesses with extensive knowledge of the allegations. With the exception of one Marine demolitions man all of them were members of 3rd Squad, Third Platoon.
"If my word isn’t good enough, nothing would be."
The platoon was ably led at Fallujah by 1st Lieutenant Jesse A. Grapes, a Sunnyvale California Catholic school administrator who left the service shortly after Fallujah to pursue a more peaceful existence. Then his son died. He was still recovering from that tragedy when Fox showed up to get a statement about the events at Fallujah. Fox interviewed Grapes at his school last spring. Shortly afterwards the Third Platoon’s brilliant former leader was recalled to active duty. His consolation was being promoted to captain.
Marines who served with him say Grapes, now 29, is a hard-charging small unit tactician who literally wrote a book about modern urban warfare following his ferocious experience in Fallujah.
They said he is considered a person of high morale and physical courage who led 3rd Platoon from the front for more than two years. Grapes’ biggest claim to fame is engineering the rescue of numerous trapped Marines at the infamous “Hell House” by leading the way.
Shedding his body armor, Grapes crawled through the bent bars of a window on his back in withering fire to get a shot at an insurgent shooter who had already wounded several Marines trying to take the house. His efforts resulted in three wounded Marines – including two Navy Cross recipients – being taken to safety.
Grapes once said he joined the Marine Corps after 9/11 to serve his country. By all accounts he serves it very well. He also says he knows nothing about the alleged capture or order to kill the prisoners. If he had heard such a thing he would have immediately stopped it, he said, but he remembers nothing remotely resembling the allegations.
The former 3rd Platoon commander gave Fox a candid, forthright statement while being questioned by Fox. He is also a principled man who refused to submit to a polygraph examination to underscore his veracity. Grapes told Fox last February that no machine could trump his honor. If his word wasn’t good enough, he said in his sworn statement, nothing would be.
Under Grapes’ command at Fallujah was Staff Sergeant Jon Marcinek Chandler, now a medically retired Gunnery Sergeant in Florida who was a late comer to 3rd Platoon. He was a platoon sergeant facing his first serious combat at Fallujah. Chandler would be grievously wounded on November 13, 2004 in a face-to-face duel with foreign fighters. He talked to Fox in the parking lot of the Florida hospital where he is still being treated for his wounds. He knows nothing about the allegations and gave a sworn statement to that effect.
Fox's hunt
Fox found Lance Corporal Samuel Severtsgaard at Camp Pendleton in early December 2006. The former 3rd Platoon rifleman was one of Fox’s early witnesses and a vulnerable one as well. Severtsgaard was anxiously waiting to leave the Corps and get on with his life when Fox came to call. At Fallujah, Severtsgaard was a lance corporal, a dependable Marine who created his own legend in a fierce duel for carrying around a live grenade he couldn’t throw.
Severtsgaard’s good friend is Cory James Carlisle, 25, on a mission to a Latter Day Saints Church to Elkhardt, Indiana when Fox tracked him down. He gave two statements. Carlisle may be the ace in the government’s hand. His testimony, sworn before an elder of the Mormon Church, bears powerful witness. At Fallujah he was hit so hard by insurgent rifle fire it twisted his leg around backwards.
Carlisle’s friend James Prentice was another Marine Fox interviewed. He was interviewed twice, the last time at the NCIS Office at Camp Pendleton in April, 2007. In November 2004 Prentice was fighting for his life at Fallujah, a SAW gunner in Nazario’s squad. Like Carlisle, he was confronted by a deadly enemy that tried repeatedly to kill him at ranges so close he could smell his assailant’s body odor. At Fallujah his ability with a SAW was undisputed.
Another witness uncovered by Fox is Cpl. Pedro Garcia, a former assaultman assigned to Nazario’s squad at Fallujah. He was there to “breach” any obstacles preventing the Marines from gaining entry into a house. In this case it was a steel gate blocking their way. Garcia tried blowing it with C-4 explosive and then asked Nelson to take a picture of his handiwork to send back home to Crystal City, Texas. Garcia wanted to remember the first house he ever breached. Fox interviewed him twice at Camp Pendleton, making Garcia confirm the second time that he had not been threatened or promised anything for his cooperation.
The government’s case is stitched together from the accounts provided by the aforementioned Marines. Tomorrow Nazario is expected to plead “Not Guilty” in US District Court for Central California in Riverside for the claims some of them made. He was indicted on the same testimony provided by the witness statements that were given to Fox. Some of them are sworn and some are not. Conspicuous by its absence is a statement from Ryan Weemer, who is expected to be back in uniform sometime soon to either face criminal prosecution or be a material witness in the case.
Murder in Fallujah?
The government’s case is built around the testimony of Carlisle, Nelson, Prentice and Weemer. Despite repeated assertions for more than two years that he did not participate in any unlawful killings at Fallujah, Weemer is now accused of killing one of the captured insurgents with his 9mm pistol. He told one of the witnesses who saw him standing over the body that the Iraqi “was going for his weapon.”
Nazario is accused of killing two men, and Nelson, by his own admission, is accused of killing one insurgent. Weemer and Nelson both maintain they were ordered to participate in the executions, sources said.
According to the witness statements the encounter with the four insurgents developed about 0830 after Lance Corporal Juan E. Segura was taken away to the Battalion Aide Station suffering from a mortal gunshot wound. Segura died shortly after arriving at the BAS.
Meanwhile, at least four Iraqis were seen by members of nearby 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon fleeing into some house in front of the platoon’s position. Nazario was ordered to take his squad in pursuit, the former 2nd Squad leader has said. Accounts about why Nazario was order to pursue differ, but the witnesses agree that moments later they approached a house where the insurgents were seen to disappear. It was guarded by a stout steel gate.
Cpl. Garcia placed a satchel charge containing the plastic explosive C-4 against the gate to breach the barrier. Cpl. Joe Hamen, taking cover two buildings away at a mortar position, said he felt the blast slam through the nearby walls when the charge went off.
The charge failed to completely breach the door and the Marines sought a different access. Prentice remembers finding an unlocked front door. Other Marines have different recollections. Regardless, the squad found itself inside a two-story house where four Iraqi men had taken refuge.
The house was on the hard crust of Fallujah’s outer defenses, the place where US Army tanks were supposed to lay waste to local resistance. Giant M1A2 Abrams tanks supported by Bradleys with 25mm chain guns and TOW missiles were supposed to clear a path. A month before the Fallujah battle Marines in similar tanks had visited the sector and received a huge volume of rocket and mortar fire. It was a killing zone.
The squad took fire when it went inside the house, several Marines recounted to Fox. Some of the witnesses recall going inside because enemy mortars were landing too close for comfort.
Half the squad, led by Nazario, went inside to clear the building. They went in a stack that included Weemer, Carlisle and Prentice.
In the first room at the top of the stairs were for Iraqi men dressed in the track suit “uniforms” of the insurgency, there were arms nearby – Kalashnikovs and full magazines – but nothing in their hands. Outside enemy mortar fire, automatic weapons fire, and rocket-propelled grenades turned the streets into deadly beaten zones. During the melee two nearby Marine Corps M-1s received disabling damage.
Second Squad leader and Navy Cross recipient R.J. Mitchell, situated across the street from Nazario’s squad, remembers seeing four or five unarmed Iraqis run into a house from another one where the Marines had received a heavy volume of fire. He remembers a demo man putting a 25-pound satchel charge against the wall outside their hidey hole and blowing them to pieces. It could have been the same charge Garcia laid or something else. Nobody knows.
Upstairs in the house occupied by Nazario’s squad things got ugly. All four of the Iraqis were lying on the floor with their backs against the wall in front of the stairs. The stacked Marines took the Iraqis prisoner, but did not bind them.
What happened next is anybody’s guess. Three of the witnesses say it was cold blooded murder. Three of the witness said it never happened at all.
One of the witnesses who said it happened claims the order to kill the prisoners came over Nazario’s handheld PRC-119 radio.
“Make it happen,” somebody said.
Another witness, the platoon radio operator who was wounded at both Fallujah and Haditha, said no such conversation ever took place or he would have heard it. He said there was never ever a reference to enemy prisoners of war during the entire two-month campaign. Another witness says somebody else was in charge of prisoners so he didn’t know anything about it.
None of the Iraqis survived.
Three witnesses say the prisoners were all killed upstairs. Three died in one room and another in the next door kitchen. They claim Nelson, Weemer, and Nazario were the shooters.
Nelson reportedly said as much himself. It is unclear if he had legal counsel when he talked to Fox the first time. One lawyer said Nelson described his efforts in detail assuming he had done his distasteful duty as well as possible. Nelson doesn’t have civilian counsel.
Another lawyer said Nelson “threw Nazario and Weemer under the bus.”
Nelson is currently defended by a Marine SJA named Captain Joseph Grimm. Grimm is also defending Marines in several other high profile cases.
Nazario is represented only by civilian attorneys because he is charged in civilian court with voluntary manslaughter. Last week a federal grand Jury in Riverside handed up a two-count indictment against him. Nazario’s lead counsel is Kevin Barry McDermott, a Tustin, California lawyer also representing former Kilo Company C.O. Capt. Luke McConnell in the Haditha investigation.
Nazario, a probationary patrolman in Riverside, California when he was arrested, hasn’t made any kind of statement at all. He is expected to plead not guilty at his arraignment in federal court in Riverside on Thursday.
All of this kind of press hurts the Marines. We continue fighting this war with a HUGE disadvantage. We are fighting under Geneva convention rules while our enemy has no uniforms to identify themselves and are bound by one rule...kill Americans or any other civilians who get in the way. No wonder incedents like “Haditha” are happening. The MSM LOVES to tear apart the Marine Corps because of their proud history in this country. If our media in this country were supportive of our Marines and soldiers this war would have already been won.
Our Marines did nothing wrong at Haditha. All the testimony and evidence to date has proven they were simply defending themselves after they were attacked.
Couldn’t agree more.
BTW, we beat the Associated Press and all the rest of the MSM to this story. Later on today or tomorrow, you can compare the facts as presented here to the MSM spin.
Didn’t mean to imply any wrongdoing by the Marines. Sorry for not wording that better.
This whole case sounds like a load of confusion during a harshly contested situation.
Thanks for responding. It shows you care about the troops.
Nelson apparently says he killed them.
Weemer is now accused of killing one of the captured insurgents with his 9mm pistol. He told one of the witnesses who saw him standing over the body that the Iraqi “was going for his weapon.”
Weemer initially brought the story to light because in the middle of a lie detector test he became nervous about a situation in Iraq that could have been an unlawful killing...one he claimed NOT to have participated in.
Nazario says none of it ever happened.
A radio guy says he never heard anything about any prisoners go over the radio, and that he would have heard it if it had.
First, I can't imagine them leaving the downstairs or the upstairs unsecured. This raises the question: Who was located where? There had to be someone to guard these Iraqis and there had to be someone to ensure the squad didn't receive unwelcome guests.
The big, big question is this: If these men were prisoners, and there were weapons nearby, who was the one guarding them?
That has not come out. One of them had to be Weemer if he said that someone "went for their weapon." It was nearby in a stack.
Another has to be Nelson, who appears to have admitted to killing these men.
Another question is: How much time elapsed from entering the house to departing it?
Another is: what would have prevented the Marines from removing loaded weapons from the vicinity of the Iraqis. (Time? This was going very fast.)
What's the likelihood that Weemer thought they went for their weapons, that Nazario was sure they did, and that Nelson is uncertain?
Nazario would put it out of his mind. It would nag at Weemer. Nelson would have guilt feelings.
Nazario would say it never happened. Weemer would show confusion. Nelson would admit guilt.
With Nelson as their only witness admitting guilt and also being the only one telling the story the way they want it, the Prosecutor would have to keep him away from the courtroom or grant him immunity.
Exactly, Grimmy. All the government has is witness testimony and that is refuted by other witnesses.
There really is no point in proceeding with this case. The government can’t win it.
Suspicious minds are wondering if NCIS knows it can’t win and is just trying to taint potential character witnesses in the Haditha case.
Thanks for the ping and info packed update.
I would like to hear from a legal eagle of the JAG variety on the scenario described above.
This is how it sounded when I read it...
Half a squad, 6 men, are isolated in a house with an enemy force that equals 50% of their number.
There is sufficient incoming fire that even the M1 Tanks are damaged.
The enemy can not be evacuated.
There is every reason to expect an eminent counter attack by the enemy.
In such a situation, is it a legally requirement to hold prisoners?
I am honestly asking. I really do want to know how far down the weak suck slide we’ve slipped.
Another excellent article by Nat Helms. When I first heard about this “alleged” incident, I bought in to the idea that it was an attempt to discredit character witnesses for the Haditha hearings. As it progressed, I thought surely, this will be the “jump the shark” moment for NCIS. Attempting to charge murder stemming from the battle of Fallujah years later, no forensics, no bodies, nothing except rumors - impossible.
I’m getting to the point where I think NCIS is so out of control, drunk on their own power, they won’t be stopped unless the organization is restructured, cleaned out from top to bottom. They seem to have an immense amount of power to intimidate witnesses, create cases out of whole cloth, and basically act as a renegade police organization with no oversight. There seems to be no redress for their impact on innocent victims of their tactics.
BUMP
No redress. No accountability. The SECNAVY obviously likes it that way. How many other cabinet members have their own secret police force?
Another excellent piece by Nat Helms, thanks for posting.
It sounds like a he said, he said thing and how the NCIS can pursue this is beyond me, especially that it happened so long ago when memories fade over time.
The NCIS doesn’t hesitate to destroy the lives of these men who laid their lives on the line for our country, seemingly on conflicting stories.
I wonder who has such a major grudge against Kilo Co that they are willing to destroy the Marines and the warriors - it is getting to be more of a dig for something, anything to find someone in Kilo Co guilty of something...
Maybe the Marines should have just flattened the damned cities...
Wonder what kind of expenditures NCIS SA Mark O. Fox wracked up in his hunt for Fallujah “murderers” from the historic battle in 2004? Sounds like he was jetting all over the US, showing up on peoples’ doorsteps when they least expected it, in different parts of the country. To be fair, his expenditures must pale in comparison to what has been spent to prosecute the Haditha Marines.
It’s interesting how finacing the prosecution seems to be treated as “the sky’s the limit”. And, yet, it’s alleged that when the defense (in the Haditha/Hamdania cases) attempts to provide two JAG lawyers, the person in charge of this decision gets fired from his regional position.
Exactly, Girl!
It is for sure that the NCIS spares no cost when it comes to their investigations and if they were trying to get the whole truth and report it, that would be a good thing.
However, from the investigations in the Haditha and Hamdania cases it has been clear they have not been seeking the whole truth. In fact, they have been shown to have withheld exculpatory evidence while the JAG Corps fires a person for assigning two defense attorneys to the accused.
SecNav Winter is the ultimate one who has to take responsibility for this and he refuses to do anything about it. It is disgraceful and he should be fired and replaced.
Thanks for this Red; this whole debacle, coupled with the rest of the lies and innuendo from the other Iraqi JAG cases, should be used as a cudgel against those in the DoD and NCIS to force a change in the operations in theatre. You keep faith with your own; you don't keep faith with an enemy who betrays every position of civilized society, and commandments from God.
The cretins these Marines are fighting have no honour, or duty to humanity; we owe them no reply in kind. I'd like to see the whole JAG battalion equipped and dropped into Baghdad for six months to fend for themselves -- except it would put more of the honourable Marines in greater danger than they are now!
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