HADITHA, Iraq • Iraqis in Haditha, where 24 unarmed civilians were killed last year, said yesterday four US Marines charged with their murder should be executed, a penalty they will not face in the United States.
“They should hand them over to us so that we can kill them. They do not deserve a trial,” said one young man who refused to give his name.
Khaled Salman, whose sister Asmaa was among 24 people killed in Haditha, gathered with friends in the early hours of Friday to watch television coverage of the charges being announced.
“Those soldiers killed 24 people. They killed women and children, isn’t that enough for them be executed? Just so that the family can have peace,” said Salman, 41.
“It’s a political trial and it will not bring our rights back,” said Salman, visibly angry.
None of the murder charges carries a possible death sentence because the Marines are charged with unpremeditated murder, and the maximum possible sentence is life in prison.
It was midnight in Iraq when the US military announced it had charged four Marines with murder and four others with dereliction of duty in the November 2005 killing in Haditha, in the restive province of Anbar northwest of Baghdad.
Iraqi witnesses say enraged Marines shot the civilians in their homes to retaliate for the death of a popular comrade who was ripped in half by a bomb that hit a convoy in the town.
However, the four Marines – Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz, Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt and Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum – face only prison sentences because the charge is of unpremeditated, not premeditated, murder.
Defence lawyers dispute the Iraqi witnesses’ version of events and say the Marines were engaged in a furious battle in Haditha after the bomb exploded and the civilians may have been killed during the chaos.
Many in Haditha, a town of over 100,000 people on the Euphrates river, stayed up to watch coverage on Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera. The trial was the talk of the town yesterday, and many were glued to the screen watching special coverage. They had little confidence in US justice.
Talal Saed, a judge who watched the news at Salman’s home, said: “If I were the judge on that trial I would have sentenced them to death for the terrible crime they have committed. They should be tried in Iraq and under the Iraqi law.”
