WASHINGTON, 17 November 2004 — The US Defense Department is investigating the shooting of an apparently wounded and unarmed Iraqi prisoner by a Marine in a mosque in Fallujah, Iraq.
The video sequence filmed by NBC reporter Kevin Sites, shows a squad of Marines finding a room of wounded insurgents inside a mosque, which was a former insurgent stronghold and was believed by Marines to be the source of heavy enemy fire.
The tape shows a Marine shouting out that one of the wounded is playing “possum.”
A second Marine says, “And he’s breathing!”
The first Marine is then shown raising his rifle toward a prisoner lying on the floor of the mosque. At that moment, the video is blacked out but the sound of the rifle can be heard.
A Marine then says, according to the videotape: “He’s dead now.”
It turns out the insurgents were unarmed, left in the mosque by a previous squad of Marines to await medical evacuation, but the second squad did not know that. The commanders had not evacuated the wounded because US troops were still under fire.
“If the Marines are engaged in combat operations still, then it’s not prudent for the commander to pull out his Marines from contact to render aid such as evacuating enemy wounded,” Lt. Bob Miller, Staff Judge Advocate of the 1st Marine Division, told journalists.
The Marine investigation command has launched an investigation into the incident. The 1st Expeditionary Force, (1MEF), of which the major ground unit is the 1st Marine Division. The NBC photographer is embedded with the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Regiment of the 1st Marine Division.
This correspondent was also embedded with the Marines, also with 1MEF, during last year’s invasion of Iraq.
Marines said the young Marine was “probably under combat stress in unpredictable circumstances,” and said it was probably the act of a young man “who faced intense pressure during the effort to quell the insurgency in the city.”
A colonel who recently returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq, told Arab News the Marine in question was wounded in the face the previous day; and that a Marine in the same unit had been killed a day earlier, and five others wounded, as they tended to the booby trapped dead body of an insurgent.
“They use bodies as booby traps all the time,” said the Marine colonel, who spoke anonymously. “They wait until Marines are close, then they detonate themselves. From what I hear, the unit didn’t know those guys were supposed to be there.
“Those poor kids – they’re on duty day in and day out, and have to deal with corpses and wounded guys that are booby trapped — the insurgents do this all the time. We had incidents where they detonated themselves either in a car full of explosives or with suicide belts,” said the colonel.
He said the unit under investigation “has been in Iraq for three months, and from what I hear, they are always in the thick of things.
“The toughest mission is urban combat, because it’s so up close and vicious. This is guerilla warfare and there are no rules on the part of the insurgents, which is hard because you have one side living with the rules of engagement, and the other side that is not bound by anything.”
“It’s going to be a tough investigation,” said the colonel. “I think the facts will be very clear, but there’s always a fog in war. They’ll do a very thorough research of what these troops were doing and will investigate the unit until kingdom come.
“They pulled that Marine out of the line, and now his life will change forever.”
But the colonel said he was disturbed by what he heard: “I don’t know what to think. If the thing was without audio, I would have thought he was protecting himself. But what he said makes me hesitate...”
“Kids act like that out of fear, that’s the way they put up a brave front. They act cavalier and tough, but the problem is that it’s picked up as something a 45-year-old would say. These kids have just gone through a week of sheer fear, they’ve not eaten or slept well, they’ve seen their buddies killed and this young man had been injured the day before….”
Pausing, he said the incident has to be thoroughly investigated: “We cannot allow these things not to be investigated, because the purpose of why we’re there is to establish democracy and show the Iraqis what a disciplined military can accomplish.
“We do live by the rules of engagement and the laws of war and — we walk the walk. We’re the first ones to follow the Geneva convention — which is to follow the rules of engagement and to be as humane as possible in the most inhumane situation imaginable.”
The problem, he said, is “how do you translate this to a 19-year-old who’s been in intense urban combat for a week?
“I’m not defending him, but to believe you do have to have an open mind. You have to look at all sides.”
“My heart is with that Marine,” the colonel admitted. “And I really want him to come out exonerated. By the same token, if there is a command mentality there to ‘kill all the hajjis’ — and if that kind of command climate permeates, then we’ve lost the war.”
