Haditha massacre

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Coordinates: 34 ° 8 ′ 23 "  N , 42 ° 22 ′ 41"  E

Location of Hadithas in Iraq

As a Haditha massacre ( Arabic مجزرة حديثة, DMG maǧzarat Ḥadīṯa  'Haditha slaughter'; English Haditha killings , incidents or massacre ) is the name given to a massacre of the civilian population in the Iraqi city ​​of Haditha , committed by members of the United States Armed Forces on November 19, 2005 . In willful retaliation for the death of a comrade, United States Marine Corps soldiers killed 24 Iraqi civilians, including children, using gunfire or hand grenades.

chronology

The picture shows the crime scene and some of the victims

Procedure according to the information provided by the soldiers involved

At 7.15 am local time, a column of four vehicles from the “ Kilo Company” of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment drove into Haditha.

A white vehicle described as a “taxi” approached them, the Americans gave the signal to stop; When the vehicle stopped at the first car of the small US column, a bomb exploded under the fourth, killing Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas.

What happened next is controversial: according to the soldiers' representation, the US column was immediately taken under fire; Local residents deny this. According to the Marines, the attackers tried to escape in a taxi (driver and four passengers) and were shot dead; Local residents claim they were executed out of revenge.

The Marines' official report said 15 Iraqis were killed directly in the bomb explosion and eight others were shot in gun fights. This representation is now considered refuted.

Reply

The Iraqi journalism student Taher Thabet came to Haditha on November 20, 2005 and made video recordings there, which came into the hands of TIME Magazine in January 2006 .

The subsequent report made the incident known to the Western public in March 2006. TIME passed the recordings on to Baghdad military spokesman Colonel Barry Johnson, who recommended a formal investigation.

The circumstances of the killing of the taxi passengers and the residents of the houses were investigated on the instructions of the Commander in Chief of the US Marines in Iraq, Major General Richard Zilmer. The investigators visited the site 15 times, conducted interviews and measured bullet holes on house walls.

According to media reports and official information from the Pentagon, members of the US Marine Corps shot or killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including nine women, five children and an elderly one-legged man in a wheelchair - sometimes at close range - as part of this retaliation.

Cover-up attempt

Senior officers in the US military tried to cover up the incident. According to a report of the newspaper The New York Times ( NYT ) July 8, 2006 leading members of the US Marine Corps committed in the investigation of the alleged massacre in Iraq mistakes in their supervisory function. Lieutenant General Peter W. Chiarelli , then commander of the Multi-National Corps - Iraq , had come to the conclusion that officers of the Marines had "violated their duties," the NYT reported, citing Defense Department officials . Members of the staff of Major General Richard A. Huck, who commanded a division in Iraq, and Colonel Stephen W. Davis had not investigated contradictions and inaccuracies in an initial report. Chiarelli recommended unspecified disciplinary action for several officers. The commander of the 3rd Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, and two of his company commanders were relieved of their command.

Evaluation and consequences

This case is classified as "perhaps the worst war crime in Iraq" by the Washington Post and human rights group Human Rights Watch .

Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich

On November 20, 2005, the military leadership issued a press release at Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi . In this, she blames Iraqi insurgents who had triggered the explosive device on the street for the death of the civilians involved: “A US marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday by an explosive device that exploded on the roadside in Haditha. Immediately after the explosion, Iraqi insurgents armed with light weapons attacked a military convoy. Iraqi soldiers and US Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and injuring another. "

On February 14, 2006, Lt. Gene. Peter Chiarelli requested a preliminary investigation because immediately after the incident a video was made public that documented the events differently than the American military described them.

On March 9, 2006, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service opened an official forensic investigation to determine whether soldiers deliberately killed Iraqi civilians.

On March 19, 2006, US Army spokesmen confirmed - contrary to the military's original report - that 15 civilians were killed by Marines and not, as previously reported, by Iraqi insurgents.

On May 29, 2006, the Times published the results of this investigation as well as interviews with eyewitnesses. It describes that the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, as well as the officers Captain Luke McConnell and Captain James Kimber of the 3rd Battalion , 1st Marine Regiment , 1st Marine Division were relieved of their military posts.

The soldiers involved were investigated for murder; a separate investigation into the cover-up was conducted against several officers. Both investigations were carried out by the US military. In mid-December 2006, group leader Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich and three other soldiers were charged with murder and manslaughter. Iraqi media, on the other hand, demanded that the accused be transferred to an Iraqi court and the death penalty. By June 2008, all the accused except Wuterich had been acquitted.

On January 24, 2012, Frank Wuterich was sentenced to 3 months in prison by the military court. He did not have to serve this sentence for procedural reasons. Since Wuterich had pleaded guilty to having violated his official duty in killing the 24 civilians, the prosecution dropped the manslaughter charge.

At the request of representatives of the city of Haditha , the Marines paid US $ 1,500-2500 in compensation for each Iraqi civilian (depending on whether man, woman or child) killed in the first two homes after the massacre  . However, they refused to make payments for nine other men they shot who they believed were insurgents. This statement was refuted by official investigators, who stated that all of the victims were "innocent victims".

James Crossen, the soldier sitting next to Terrazas, was also injured by the explosive device detonating on the roadside. In an interview with King5 Television in Seattle , he said that children often count military vehicles in convoys and pass them on to insurgents. When asked about his feelings about the women and children killed in the massacre, he replied to the moderator that he had no sympathy for them: “ No […] Probably half of them were bad guys and you just don't know, so it really doesn't cross my mind. […] Being so far away and it being so hot […] you just lose control sort of and kind of stop caring what happened and I'm pretty sure that's what happened over there ” (German: "No [...] probably half of them are criminals anyway, you just don't know anything about them. I never really thought about them. [...] So far away and it was so hot [...] you just lose." in control, so to speak, and somehow stop caring about what happened - and I'm pretty sure that was what happened there. ")

In the fall of 2007, Nick Broomfield released the film Battle for Haditha , in which he looks at events from different angles. The film shows a possible sequence of what actually happened. The film was not released in Germany, but it is available on DVD.

Conditions in the Kilo Company camp

On June 20, 2006, the BBC reported in a broadcast about the conditions in the K (ilo) Company . All four hundred members of this unit were billeted in the vicinity of a water dam - a potential target of attack that is seriously endangered because of its importance for power generation - about 4.5 km north of Haditha in the open area. The camp was compared to an "overgrown rabbit hole" due to the confinement of the premises and the conditions there. Oliver Poole, a BBC reporter who visited the camp, called the conditions “repulsive”: “The fact that officers and officials had allowed the conditions in which people lived there to deteriorate to such a low level, says something. Where were the officers who upheld the standards of the US military on duty? "

It was also reported that living conditions in Haditha had deteriorated massively under the US occupation and that attacks on US troops and the execution of suspicious Iraqi informants were commonplace.

Following the Haditha incident, the US Army announced a basic ethics course for all coalition forces in Iraq.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tim McGirk: Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha? In: Time . March 19, 2006.
  2. ↑ Evidence suggests Haditha killings deliberate: Pentagon source. CBC News, Aug. 2, 2006.
  3. ↑ US military mourns 'tragic' Haditha deaths CNN .com, June 1, 2006, (English).
  4. ^ A b Eric Schmitt, David S. Cloud General Faults Marine Response to Iraq Killings In: The New York Times . July 8, 2006, (English).
  5. ↑ a b c In Haditha, Memories of a Massacre In: The Washington Post. May 27, 2006, (English).
  6. ↑ Matthias Rüb : America's bitter self-discovery. In: FAZ . June 5, 2006.
  7. ↑ IRAQ "Even the highest ranking US officer in the Haditha massacre will not be prosecuted" Spiegel Online from June 18, 2006.
  8. ↑ nachrichten.ch
  9. ↑ BBC News, US braced for Haditha effect , June 20, 2006
  10. ↑ Omer Mahdhi, Rory Carroll: Under US noses, brutal insurgents rule Sunni citadel . In: The Guardian . August 22, 2005
  11. ^ Haditha case: Damage limitation and new allegations Rhein-Zeitung, June 1, 2006