Marines cover-up civilian killing spree

Military investigations have found that US Marines in the town of Haditha wantonly killed as many as two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians, including children, last November and then tried to cover up the slayings. First reported in March by Time magazine, the three- to five-hour killing spree, has reportedly been detailed to some lawmakers behind closed doors by senior military officers and Pentagon officials last week. But major US newspapers have since provided accounts based on eyewitness testimony by residents of Haditha as well as second-hand reports by lawmakers, notably ex-Marine veteran and Iraq War critic, Democratic Rep. John Murtha, about what they have been told. The massacre was reportedly triggered by the bombing of a military convoy that resulted in the death of one Marine. A squad of Marines subsequently conducted a sweep of the neighborhood, first killing five men in a taxi, then invading homes where they killed unarmed men, women and children, most at close range. One Congressional official described the killings as "methodical in nature," and despite initial reports of the incident to the contrary, no indication that the Marines faced armed resistance or attack at any time during their sweep has emerged. "This was not an immediate response to an attack," another ex-Marine, Republican Rep. John Kline, also said. "This would be an atrocity." Worse, there appears to have been an attempt at covering up the incident, including planting evidence to indicate the presence of armed resistance and lying to military investigators. The initial descriptions of the killings as resulting from the original bombing and then a running battle between the Marines and insurgents also proved false. The fact, however, that no serious investigation of the killings appears to have taken place until after the appearance of Time's report more than four months after the incident–coupled with the military's offer of $2,500 per victim to the surviving family members in compensation, a decision normally handled at senior levels–has added to the impression that the Marines or the Pentagon or both had tried to prevent the massacre from coming to light. These factors were cited as evidence of a cover-up by Murtha, a former Marine colonel whose ties to the uniformed military are considered particularly close and who first disclosed the preliminary results of the military's investigation two weeks ago. "There has to have been a cover-up of this thing," he said. "No question about it," he added, suggesting that it could go high up the chain of command. "How far up it went, I don't know." Murtha also noted another pending case against a separate group of Marines who are accused of summarily executing an Iraqi man just last month near Falluja and then trying to cover it up. In the Haditha case, one battalion commander and two company commanders have reportedly been relieved of their posts, while several Marines who allegedly carried out the killings are being held in the brig at their home base at Fort Pendleton, CA, pending the completion of the investigations. A dozen other Marines have also been implicated. Among the pieces of evidence that conflicted with the Marines' story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest, a senior military official said. Murtha said that Marine officials had told him of one Iraqi woman "bending over a child, pleading for mercy" when the Marines "shot her in cold blood." He said a man was "asking for mercy" in English before being shot. "This is worse than Abu Ghraib," Murtha said. "There was no fire-fight. There was no IED [improvised explosive device] that killed these innocent people…. They killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Tales from the 'terror war' Iman Hassan, a 10-year-old Iraqi girl, said how she had watched the Marines kill her mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, four-year-old cousin and two uncles. As Iman tells it, the soldiers burst into her house 15 minutes after the bomb destroyed the Humvee, apparently looking for insurgents. A grenade was thrown into her grandparents' room. "Grandpa was sitting close to the hall and they shot him dead," Iman said. Then soldiers opened fire inside the living room, where most of the family were gathered. Her uncle Rashid came downstairs, saw what was happening, then fled outside, where he was pursued by Marines and shot. "Everybody who was in the house was killed by the Americans except my brother Abdul-Rahman and me," Iman said. "We were too scared to move and tried to hide under a pillow. I was hit by shrapnel in my leg. For two hours we didn't dare to move. My family didn't die immediately. We could hear them groaning." Iman's 76-year-old grandfather Abdul al-Hamid Hassan, her grandmother Khamisa, her father Walid, uncle Mujahid, her mother, uncle Rashid and cousin Abdullah, 4, had all been fatally wounded. Abu Makram, 50, had been awakened by the roadside bomb and watched the incident unfold. Makram said Iman's grandfather had a leg which had been amputated because of diabetes. "He was a blind old man in a wheelchair." A video made by a trainee Iraqi journalist and passed to Time showed bloodstained bodies, bullet and shrapnel marks inside the Hassan family home, and walls spattered with blood. There was no evidence of a skirmish on the outside of the buildings. Doctors said that most of the victims had been shot from close range in the head or chest. Iman fled next-door, where her other grandfather Yunis lived, only to find everybody there appeared to have been killed too, including five children, the youngest of whom were two and three years old. There was in fact one survivor, Safa Yunis Salim, 12. "My daddy tried to open the door to let the Americans in, but he was immediately shot in the head and body," Safa said. "I was the only one who survived. I watched them kill my entire family. I am all alone now," she said, crying. Mohammed Basit, 23, an engineering student, said that he watched as Marines entered the home of his neighbor, Rasif Salim, Safa's father. "I saw them all gathering in their parents' room, then we heard a bang which was most likely a hand grenade, then we heard shooting," he said. Throughout the next day the soldiers cordoned off the Salim and Hassan homes, which are located about 20 meters apart. The next night Basit and his father slipped inside the Salims' house. "The blood was everywhere in [Rasif's] bedroom," Basit said. "I saw organs and flesh on the ground and a liver on the bed. Blood splattered the ceiling." Later Basit joined relatives and friends who went to al-Haditha mortuary to pick up the bodies of those whom the Marines had killed. "They were all shot, even the kids. They were shot more than one time, mostly in the chest and the head," he claimed. Salim's daughters–A'isha, 3, Zainab, 2, Noora, 15, and Saba'a, 11–and his eight-year-old son, Mohammed, were among the dead. One witness, Aws Fahmi, heard his neighbor Rasif Salim plead for his life in English, shouting: "I am a friend, I am good." "But they killed him, his wife and daughters," Fahmi said. When the Marines reportedly stormed a third house they changed tactics. The men were separated from the women and stuffed into a large cupboard, according to Yussef Ayed Ahmad, the brother of the dead men, who lived next-door. "They placed my four brothers into the wardrobe and proceeded to shoot them as they were inside," he said. 'Mom, I can't clean my boots' Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones says he is tormented by the memories of Nov. 19, 2005, in Haditha. Briones said he took photographs of the victims and helped carry their bodies out of their homes as part of the cleanup crew sent in on the day of the killings. "They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart," Briones said. He said Navy investigators later interrogated him about the pictures and confiscated his camera. Briones said he took pictures of at least 15 bodies before his camera batteries died. He said he then helped other Marines remove the bodies and place them in body bags. He said his worst moment, and one that haunts him to this day, was picking up the body of a young girl who was shot in the head. "I held her out like this," he said, demonstrating with his arms extended, "but her head was bobbing up and down and the insides fell on my legs." His mother, Susie Briones, confided to a reporter that her son called frequently from Iraq after he experienced nightmares over the little girl. "He called me many times," she said, "about carrying this little girl in his hands and her brains splattering on his boots. He'd say, 'Mom, I can't clean my boots. I can't clean my boots. I see her.'" In early April, less than 36 hours after his return from Iraq, Ryan Briones got into serious trouble in his hometown that he and his family say was related to stress from the Haditha incident. Briones was charged with stealing a pickup truck, crashing it into a house, leaving the scene of the accident, driving under the influence and resisting arrest. His mother said that her son has joined Alcoholics Anonymous and is being treated by a San Diego physician for his post-traumatic symptoms. "My son saw what the Marines did, and he knew who did it before the Haditha investigations began," the mother wrote in a long letter to local authorities seeking leniency in the criminal cases. "He saw the killings and knew who sent the word out to do the killings, he had to clean up the bodies of children who were sleeping in their beds." Many veterans have talked about the brutalizing effects of the war. Hart Viges, who was in the 82nd Airborne Division and saw action in Baghdad and Falluja, said he witnessed an order to open fire on all taxis in the city of Samawa because it was believed Iraqi forces were using them. He still suffers nightmares: "You can't wash your hands when they're covered in blood. The wounds carry on. This is what war does to your soul, to your humanity." Another veteran, Specialist Jody Casey, told the BBC his unit was advised to carry shovels in their vehicles which they could plant on civilian victims to make it look as if they were concealing roadside bombs. "I have seen innocent people being killed. IEDs go off and [you] just zap any farmer that is close to you," he said. "You're driving down the road at three in the morning. There's a guy on the side of the road, you shoot him... you throw a shovel off." 'Dogs in the eyes of Americans' The remains of the 24 victims of last November's slaughter in Haditha lie today in a cemetery called Martyrs' Graveyard. Stray dogs scrounge in the deserted homes. "Democracy assassinated the family that was here," graffiti on one of the houses declares. Families of those killed keep an ear cocked to a foreign station, Radio Monte Carlo, waiting for any news of a trial of the Marines. "They are waiting for the sentence–although they are convinced that the sentence will be like one for someone who killed a dog in the United States," said Waleed Mohammed, a lawyer preparing a file for Iraqi courts and the United Nations, if the US trial disappoints. "Because Iraqis have become like dogs in the eyes of Americans."