Excerpt:
Cover-Ups
In most cases of serious misconduct and murder, soldiers directly involved have tried to cover up the crimes. Also, commanders have often ignored evidence, failed to pursue actively even the most serious cases and made exculpatory public statements. In the case of
Haditha , the Marine Corps issued a press release the next day claiming that many of the Iraqis had died from the blast of an insurgent bomb, a version contested by witnesses. In spite of the many Iraqi casualties, the company commander did not inspect the site, choosing to rely on the report of the soldiers involved. Subsequently, investigators found that pages were missing from a company logbook and a video tape from a drone flying overhead had disappeared. Apparently, the perpetrators or those in collusion with them had destroyed or withheld evidence.
[53] Those involved in the incident apparently also made misleading statements to investigators.
[54] A marine inquiry determined that "some officers gave false information to their superiors" in the initial follow-up to the case.
[55] In a later report, Major General Eldon A. Bargewell found "willful negligence" among Marine officers and " attempts to hide criminal conduct. " Senior officers, he concluded, "exhibited a determination to ignore indications of serious misconduct, perhaps to avoid conducting an inquiry that could prove adverse to themselves or their Marines ."
[56]
As in
Mahmudiya where soldiers tried to conceal evidence of the rape and killing of the teenage girl and her family,
[57] or in
Hamdaniya where the soldiers put an AK-47 automatic rifle next to the man they had murdered,
[58] those involved in the
Ishaqi murders called in air support to blow up the house. It appears that they hoped that the crime would disappear beneath the rubble.
[59] The US command first exonerated the soldiers, saying that three civilians died due to the exchange of fire in a military operation and also due to the collapse of the house which occurred during the combat. The civilian deaths were determined to be "unintentional," and US forces involved in the incident were said to have "followed the rules of engagement."
[60] But neighbors and local leaders complained to Iraqi police that the soldiers entered the house while it was still standing. The police opened an inquiry, using a US-trained criminal investigation team that literally dug up the facts from the collapsed house.
[61] After examining the bodies, hands bound, all in one room with execution-style bullet holes to the head and spent US cartridges nearby, the investigators concluded that the people had been murdered in cold blood. Eleven, not three, bodies were found in the rubble.
[62] Autopsies at Tikrit Hospital confirmed that all the victims had bullet wounds to the head.
[63] The BBC has shown a video from an Associated Press cameraman, taken afterwards on the scene, that provides strong evidence of the atrocity.
[64] But the US military has refused to open a case or to investigate further.
In the case of the death of Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari too, an Italian government report issued on May 3, 2005 criticized the way that evidence of the shooting disappeared. The scene of the incident was not preserved for investigation and the logs of the military unit on the day in question were later destroyed. At the very least, this was sloppy procedure. Quite possibly, it was obstruction of justice and the covering up of a crime.
[65]
A Pentagon mental health survey of troops in Iraq found that "less than half of Soldiers and Marines would report a team member for unethical behavior," such as not following general orders, violating the rules of engagement, and mistreating or killing civilians.
[66] US military authorities, embarrassed by a rash of atrocities, have chosen to back up the official version of the facts, insisting that victims died as collateral damage in military operations. Such cover-ups have kept some cases from public view entirely, and they have diminished the strength of the evidence against the perpetrators of the prosecuted crimes. They have contributed to the dismissal of cases and the very weak sentences that are usually handed down.
Impunity
The military justice system has acted very rarely to punish cases of murder and atrocities. Most such cases have never reached the point of a formal charge. Even when a charge has been handed down, the cases have usually been dismissed at the preliminary administrative tribunal stage or at the later court martial phase. Or they have been settled at either stage with a very mild rebuke or punishment. Very few charges have included premeditated murder, even in such egregious incidents as Haditha.
In late August 2006, the
Washington Post reviewed military cases during the period June 2003 to February 2006. The
Post report found that while thousands of Iraqis had been killed by US soldiers under questionable circumstances, the military justice system prosecuted only a "small portion of the incidents."
[67] No homicide prosecutions at all have arisen from shootings at checkpoints and very few high-ranking officers have been charged.
Commanders – who must make the decision to start a criminal investigation against their subordinates - have often failed to investigate Iraqi civilian deaths. They have preferred to consider them as unintended consequence of combat operations and ordered administrative or non-judicial punishments instead. "I think there are a number of cases that never make it to the reporting stage, and [for those that do] there has been a reluctance to pursue them vigorously," said Gary Solis, a former Marine prosecutor. "There have been fewer prosecutions in Iraq than one might expect."
[68] An army major quoted by the
Washington Post concurred: "I think there were many other engagements that should have been investigated, definitely. But no one wanted to look at them or report them high… It was just the way things worked."
[69]
Criticism
The killing of civilians by US troops has raised anger and outrage among the Iraqi population and has sparked strong statements from Iraqi officials. Asked to comment on the events in Haditha, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called them "totally unacceptable" and qualified US violence against civilians as a "daily phenomenon" in Iraq . He said bluntly that Coalition troops do not "respect the Iraqi people."
[70] After the announcement that a US investigation had cleared troops in the Ishaqi case, the Iraqi government reacted strongly. Adnan al-Kazimi, an aide to Prime Minister al-Maliki, said the government would demand an apology from the US and compensation for the victims in several cases.
[71]
The small number of convictions has pushed the Iraqi government to question the immunity given to members of Coalition forces since June 2004. Al-Maliki publicly said he believed immunity from Iraqi courts "encouraged [troops] to commit crimes in cold blood."
[72] Iraq Human Rights Minister Wigdan Michael concurred, that the US failure to hold soldiers accountable for their crimes had fostered a climate of impunity among troops: "One of the reasons for this is the UN resolution, which gives the multinational force soldiers immunity. Without punishment, you get violations. This happens when there is no punishment."
[73] Michael also raised the possibility that Iraq would demand a review of the Multinational Forces' immunity by the UN Security Council.
