You can read the whole indictment HERE
Posted on 07/13/2008 7:44:33 AM PDT by RedRover
A Marine sergeant charged with murdering an enemy combatant captured in Fallujah during the heat of battle repeatedly told Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agents he didn’t do anything wrong.
Sergeant Ryan Weemer’s words were captured during a lengthy 2006 interview with NCIS Special Agents Mark Fox and Tess Berg obtained by Defend Our Marines. The interview took place on November 16 in Chesterfield, Missouri, a suburb of Saint Louis.
A carefully cherry-picked version of his statement was revealed by the prosecution during Weemer’s Article 32 preliminary hearing last week.
Much less was said about Weemer’s apparent confusion, his overwhelming remorse, and his compelling need to seek absolution from the very people intent on putting him in jail.
Several hours of prodding and probing primarily by Fox revealed that Weemer, now 26, was an obviously disturbed young man who had lost his youth and much of his soul in the fiery cauldron of Fallujah.
During a battering, soul-searching interrogation, Weemer often sounded like a confused and sometimes incoherent young man tortured by his memories of the war. Despite a barrage of questions Weemer was unable to provide Fox with where the alleged killings occurred, when, or at what time.
Fox, a ruthlessly effective interrogator, used similar tactics to extract a pair of convoluted confessions from co-defendant Sgt. Jermaine Nelson during the international dragnet NCIS put on to bring the Marines up on charges. Like Weemer, Nelson waived his right to an attorney and was charged with murder after cooperating.
"I know there were five days or four days that went by I don’t remember much of because I was just, like I said, I just feel like I was there," Weemer explained at the Residence Inn where the NCIS duo batted his fractured psyche back and forth like a badminton shuttlecock.
"Would that be between the 9th and the 13th?" Fox pressed on.
"Yes. Probably, somewhere close – well I remember like the 13th seems like a day I can remember what we were doing. We were cleaning house and, but before that it seems that everyone was the same other than the incidents that happened," Weemer replied.
Weemer should remember November 13, 2004. On that day he was shot three times in the leg by a foreign fighter – a suspected Chechen who Weemer lit on fire with 14 shots from his pistol during an arm’s length gunfight in a darkened room of the infamous Hell House. Weemer was able to kill the man when he saw him in the fire of his burning equipment.
"His chest rig was still on fire so I could see his face," Weemer recounted in April 2006. "I shot him in the legs and when he went down in the doorway – I shot him in the face."
With him at the Hell House were Sgt John Winnick, LCpl Stephen Tatum, L Cpl Justin Sharratt, Sgt Jose Nazario, and Sgt Jermaine Nelson, despised by some of their own now for being criminals when they fought for their country.
Weemer and Nelson are currently under open arrest at Camp Pendleton on a federal contempt of court citation for refusing to testify before a federal Grand Jury in California. The civilian jurors are weighing the prosecutor’s desire to enhance charges of voluntary manslaughter against their former squad leader Jose Nazario to murder and unlawfully using a weapon.
Nazario and Weemer were both civilians when charged by the NCIS with committing crimes in Iraq. Nazario was arrested off his job as a police officer and frog marched in handcuffs past his peers on the way to a federal indictment in US District Court.
Weemer was recalled to active duty from college and a new wife in Louisville, Kentucky so he could be charged with murder and dereliction of duty.
Both Weemer and Nelson have since clammed up, leading an exasperated federal judge to jail them in June for contempt of court for refusing to testify against Nazario and each other after being granted unwelcome immunity. It was the second time Nelson had been sent to the slammer for refusing to talk.
The frustrated judge released them from a San Bernardino County civilian jail on July 3rd, in Weemer’s case after almost three weeks in a 12-man bullpen filled with common criminals.
Nazario is charged in US District Court for Central California for killing two of for insurgent prisoners his squad captured on November 9, 2004. He is scheduled to go on trial August 19, his attorney Kevin B. McDermott recently said.
Weemer told the agents that the incident at Fallujah was an exigency of war that resulted in the deaths of four insurgent prisoners his squad captured in the opening hours of the ground assault against the heavily fortified city. Only later, after much cajoling and correcting did Weemer admit he shot one of the prisoners. He couldn’t even explain why.
"And you’re talking two years later and now you want to bring all these things back up. You caught me on a good day, for one. Ummm, for two years I tried forgetting everything," Weemer says in response to one of Fox’s questions.
"Well, it isn’t by design," Fox assures Weemer.
"No," Berg agrees seconds before her partner asks Weemer why he told a Secret Service agent interviewing him for a job that he killed a prisoner. His revelation during a job interview triggered the investigation currently shaming the Corps.
When Weemer declines with a grunt to answer his accusatory question, Fox asks, "Okay, what does it mean to you?"
Weemer: "It means we had to go. Uh, we couldn’t take them: you know, we knew if we let them go they’re just going to run around our back side and pull out weapons elsewhere. The city was just covered with weapons everywhere."
ox: "Right."
Weemer: "We found [weapons] caches in all places, and we blew them all."
Fox: "Okay, so when you say take care of it you have to kill these guys or they are going to kill you later?"
Weemer: "Umm hum."
There's more at the LINK. This is the first in a weekly series of articles from Defend Our Marines that will lead up to the civilian trial of Jose Nazario on August 19th.
1. Kill the prisoners that were trying to kill him just seconds prior.
2. Let them go free so they could try to kill him and his marines at a later date.
War is an ugly son of a bit-h. I can not fault Sergent Nazario and his men.
fox: "Right."
Weemer: "We found [weapons] caches in all places, and we blew them all."
Fox: "Okay, so when you say take care of it you have to kill these guys or they are going to kill you later?"
Ok, I'm going to argue this is exculpatory, given the insurgents were not an organized, uniformed militia, nor did they acknowledge the Geneva convention. Given the situation our forces did not have to take any prisoners, and anyone captured could be executed upon order. Certainly they were not able to give parole.
On the other hand I bet our legal guys structured the ROE so this essential option was against the rules.
Some general officer IS responsible for this mess.
The civilian prosecutions should not have gone forward for lack of jurisdiction. Someone in our legal system is effectively in cahoots with the terrorists.
Consider that the only evidence of killings "confessed" to by Nelsen & Weemer appears to be that which Fox himself narrated, and there are wild discrepancies in them, such as there originally being 8 prisoners shot, then it was 4.
Nazario claims the killings never happened, and no one else can remember them, nor is there any record of a voice on the radio asking if the prisoners are alive.
The home where the killings purportedly took place was still standing after the battle, and when the owners returned, there was no evidence of any killings.
I fully agree that any terrorist has zero rights other than to die quickly after they've told us anything we want to know. They simply have no rights under the Geneva Convention. Unfortunately, the government has, for purely political reasons subverted those rules and substituted new ones, apparently at whim, including the cherry picking of military and civilian laws, sometimes using them in tandem, to create double jeopardy situations such as the recent charges of AWOL due to incarceration by a civilian judge's ruling of contempt on the same case.
You can read the whole indictment HERE
we need to NEVER forget, who the real enemy is, including the Navy/Marine lawyers with tongues out, noses shiny brown and lips puckered tightly on the officer one rung up the ladder.
just great. First you manage to witness friends killed and disfigured, then after being fortunate enough to survive you get back to the states and have the REMF's decide that in order for them to look good to the democrats and others on the promotion board....well we just gotta have a few miscreant Marines that are just nuts and gun crazy.
Every single NCIS/JAG needs to pull 6 months outside the wire on foot patrol and then start advocating war crimes against men that have had to live through combat.
Where are the muzzie trials for cutting our men up, setting them on fire, and generally being muzzies? What are the excuses given for the religion of peace?
Why doesn't NCIS investigators assist the mullahs in order to make sure they comply with ROE? Cause ya gotta know that no muzzie would ever use a mosque as a depot/observation deck/sniper post, or hide ammo/supplies in a school/hospital or infirmary.
I really don't care, what these Marines did. My only hope is that they know how proud we are of them. That they know that we're happy they're home, safe and sound. That we all wish for the NCIS/JAG and others that hope to defeat the Marines in the courtroom, meet a similar fate to others who have fought Marines.
Well said, DV. I couldn't agree more and hope those making the cases against these Marines realize that one day they'll be judged for their actions in this life.
BUMP!!!
One of more of these people should be investigated because their actions in support of the indictment and prosecution of Nazario, notwithstanding his guilt or innocence in the military case, give the appearance of effectively aiding and abetting terrorism:
Who has oversight of the US Attorney's actions?
An Excerpt: " Explanation: The United States Attorneys (USAs) serve as the nation's principal litigators under the direction of the Attorney General. The USAs are appointed by, and serve at the discretion of, the President of the United States, with the advice and consent of the United States Senate. The USAs report to the Attorney General through the Deputy Attorney General. Each USA serves as the chief federal law enforcement officer within his/her judicial district and, as such, is responsible for the prosecution of criminal cases brought by the federal government, the litigation and defense of civil cases in which the United States is a party, the handling of criminal and civil appellate cases before the United States Court of Appeals, and the collection of civil and criminal debts owed the federal government which are administratively uncollectible".
>>This only increases my disdain for the NCIS and their methods of investigation of our troops for alledged crimes while in combat.
Why don’t these Marines have the same rights as terrorists? Why are they being tortured by NCIS scum?
Because they are trying to destroy America! What better way than to destroy the Marine Corps, the finest fighting force God put on this pitiful planet.
They deserve better.
“Just once, all we wanted was for our country to love us, as much as we loved her.” John Rambo
I know you don’t like it when I call you Shirley, but surely, they can’t get Tatum and Sharratt into this mess....Surely not????
Those who do the despising are forgetting they live in a glass house.
Be nice to round a bunch of these people up and tattoo this on their A$$., since that is their most prominent feature having their heads buried in something that is not a Latin primer. Apparently they couldn't even learn two words:
Eerie. I've seen an indictment very similar to that one before.
I've seen the word "unbelievable" passed around. I would propose a different word, unfathomable, cause there are just too many people agreeing on the weirdness for it to be unbelievable any longer.
Nazario says that this stuff that Weemer and Nelson are saying NEVER even happened. Ever.
I can’t get your pic to open. :(
Now it does~ “We The”?
They should build them a statue, not persecute them.
We The People. Hmmm, worked okay when I previewed it. Any body else?
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