US marine officers negligent in Haditha investigation: NY Times
AFP
Date: 07-08-06
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Top US Marine Corps officers in Iraq failed to properly investigate reports of the killings of 24 civilians by marines in the town of Haditha, the New York Times reports, citing two Pentagon officials.
Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, currently the second-ranking US commander in Iraq, has found that a division commander, Major General Richard Huck, and the commander of the Second Regimental Combat Team, Colonel Stephen Davis, failed to investigate contradictions and inaccuracies in the initial incident report, the officials told the Times.
The November 2005 massacre in the western town has been a black eye for US forces trying to gain the support from Iraqi civilians.
Chiarelli "concludes that some officers were derelict in their duties," one of the unnamed officials told the Times. The officials, who had been briefed by the findings, did not say how many officers aside from Huck and Davis were singled out.
Chiarelli's findings now go to the desk of the top US military commander in Iraq, General George Casey.
According to the Times, it could take days for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to be briefed on the report, and before a redacted version of Chiarelli's findings are made public.
The US Marine Corps initially reported that 15 civilians and a marine were killed by a roadside explosion in Haditha.
But the military opened an investigation after Time magazine reported in March that witnesses, backed by a videotape of the scene, said the marines went on a rampage after a roadside explosion killed one of their comrades.
The marines allegedly went house to house deliberately killing men, women and children. Five unarmed men in a taxi near the site of the bombing were also allegedly killed, according to accounts leaked to the press.
The Navy Criminal Investigative Service is conducting a separate criminal probe into the alleged massacre.
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