So are you saying that the people killed were never positively identified? And that he’s charged with 9, not 24?
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Thank you.
Welcome NEMDF & SuzyQue, you’re both on!
Sorry to say the answer is "yes and no".
There was a lot of fighting going on around the ambush site that day. So the first problem for an investigation is trying to sort out who SSgt Wuterich and his squad is supposed to have killed and who was killed by other action.
Former sergeant Salinas testified this week that he killed somebody running outside one of the houses. Former lieutenant Kallop testified that members of the Iraqi army (embedded with the Marines) were shooting at people and that an insurgent was shot after the incident by the Marines not far from the ambush site. Eight hundred meters up the road, four dismembered bodies were recovered after the airstrike. More were recovered later.
So an investigator has to deal with a fair number of bodies, many without heads (to be blunt) and no way to tie their deaths back to an actor. As far as I know, all the dead ended up in an Iraqi morgue so identifying the dead is based on the claims of Iraqi families (I don't mean that I doubt the claims, but I'm trying to suggest that a battlezone makes for a lousy crime scene).
Based on family claims, we do know the names of Iraqis killed in two houses cleared by SSgt Wuterich and his squad. But we don't know that SSgt Wuterich directly shot or grenaded any of them. There is no real forensic evidence which is why NCIS will have to rely on reconstructions.
The only people we know for sure that SSgt Wuterich shot that day were the five individuals at the white car. In the original charge sheet, the specification read that he did "willfully and unlawfully kill one or more unknown persons, located near a white car, at or near the intersection of Routes Chestnut and Viper, by shooting them with a loaded M16A4 service rifle."
So we have dead, identified Iraqis, killed by SSgt Wuterich's squad but we don't know if SSgt Wuterich himself actually killed any of them or not.
And we have another group of unidentified Iraqis that SSgt Wuterich says he shot but there is no evidence that his shots killed them (former sergeant Dela Cruz was also shooting).
And that he’s charged with 9, not 24?
The original charge sheet didn't list 24 dead Iraqis despite the fact that the Corps said "24 men, women, and children" had been killed.
The charge sheet for the court martial only listed charges with no specifications. There are nine counts of voluntary manslaughter against SSgt Wuterich and the assumption has been that each count must be for an individual.
It's hard to get to the bottom of this without the new specifications and the USMC isn't answering any questions.
I posted the charge sheet for the court martial HERE. I added the specifications in the original charge sheet--but that's not to say they are still operative specifications.
Hope all that (or most of that anyway) makes sense. We'll basically need to wait and hear more during the trial to know just who SSgt Wuterich is charged with killing and on what evidence. But this is the best we can do for now.