CAMP PENDLETON — Seven Marines and a Navy medical corpsman were charged Wednesday with premeditated murder, kidnapping, conspiracy and other offenses in connection with the April 26 death of an Iraqi civilian in Hamandiya and an alleged cover-up.
The defendants are accused of breaking into a home in the town west of Baghdad, dragging out an unarmed, disabled 52-year-old Iraqi named Hashim Ibrahim Awad and killing him.
An AK-47 and a shovel were left near the body to make it appear Awad was an insurgent caught digging a hole to plant a roadside bomb, military investigators said.
The troops had been searching for an insurgent, and after finding his home empty, they went next door and pulled out Awad, legal papers said. In the U.S. military, a charge of premeditated murder carries a maximum penalty of death.
The eight Camp Pendleton-based troops are members of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, 1st Marine Division, and have been in the brig at the base here since being shipped back in late May. The rest of the battalion is still in Iraq and is due home in August.
Those charged were identified as Marine Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, Cpl. Trent Thomas, Lance Cpl. Tyler Jackson, Pfc. John Jodka, Lance Cpl. Jerry Shumate Jr., Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington, Cpl. Marshall Magincalda and Navy Corpsman Melson Bacos.
Defense attorneys quickly countered the charges and predicted a long and contentious legal fight. Each of the eight defendants has both military and civilian lawyers.
"It's going to be a war," predicted Rich Brannon, a Georgia attorney and former Marine who represents Hutchins.
The charges come amid a continuing investigation of a dozen Marines in the Nov. 19 deaths of 24 Iraqis, including women and children, in the insurgent stronghold of Haditha, west of Hamandiya. The Marines under investigation in that case are from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division, also based at Camp Pendleton.
The Hamandiya charges also came in the same week that the military announced that four U.S. Army soldiers had been charged with premeditated murder in connection with the killing of three Iraqi detainees in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad. Charges against the fourth soldier were announced Wednesday.
Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, more than 30 American military personnel have been charged with wrongfully killing Iraqis. At least nine have been convicted by military courts, with the most severe penalty a 25-year-to-life prison term.
