Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: "Kill all military-age males"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/world/middleeast/23abuse.html?_r=1&oref=sl
ogin&pagewanted=print
July 23, 2006
Lawyers for 4 Accused Soldiers Say They Acted on Orders
By ROBERT F. WORTH
On the morning of May 9, a group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne
Division arrived in a remote desert area of western Iraq for a
dangerous mission: taking out an insurgent training camp.
What happened then has become the subject of intense dispute.
Military prosecutors last month accused four soldiers in the unit of
releasing three Iraqi men they captured that day, only to kill them.
The soldiers have been charged with premeditated murder, a capital
offense.
Lawyers for the soldiers deny that they released the detainees. They
say the soldiers fired only after the Iraqis tried to break free and
attack them.
But the lawyers are also making a more startling claim: that the
soldiers were given explicit orders before the raid to "kill all
military-age males" they encountered.
The lawyers say that two senior officers - a colonel and a captain
- have acknowledged that they gave that order, as have other men in
the same company.
Military officials in Baghdad declined to comment on the alleged order,
first reported by The Associated Press, saying that the investigation
was continuing.
An order to kill all military-age men would be "clearly unlawful, and
any officer giving it would be liable for any action taken," said
Gary D. Solis, a former military judge and prosecutor who teaches the
law of war at Georgetown University.
He said that he found it impossible to believe such an order was given.
The lawyers, Paul Bergrin and Michael Waddington, also said that after
the soldiers captured the three Iraqis, a sergeant in the company asked
over the radio why they had done so, instead of killing the Iraqis as
they had been told to do.
The accused soldiers - Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, Specialist
William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, and Specialist Juston R.
Graber - are among 16 American service members who have been charged
with murder in Iraq in the past two months.
Mr. Bergrin said two initial inquiries into the killings by commanders
found no wrongdoing.
It was only later, he said, that a soldier came forward to say that he
had witnessed the soldiers devise a plot to release the detainees and
then kill them. The four are also charged with threatening a fellow
soldier with death if he reported their actions.
The raid that led to the killings took place on an island in a canal
near the Syrian border, northwest of Baghdad. The soldiers, with the
3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division, were told that
the island contained a training camp for insurgents affiliated with Al
Qaeda in Iraq, the militant group formerly led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
Mr. Bergrin said.
The soldiers were also told that a group of Special Forces soldiers had
tried to attack the camp previously, only to be beaten back by
well-armed militants, he added.
The men killed the first Iraqi they came into contact with, an older
man who was looking out through the window of a house, Mr. Bergrin
said. Then, he said, they went to a second house, where they found
three men hiding and using women and children as human shields.
Mr. Bergrin gave the following account of what happened next. The
soldiers separated the men from the women and children and bound their
hands. One of the accused, Sergeant Girouard, called the company's
first sergeant on the radio. The response to the news that there were
prisoners was: "Why did you take them prisoner? Why didn't you kill
them?"
Later, according to Mr. Waddington, the lawyer representing Specialist
Hunsaker, the soldiers noticed that the detainees seemed close to
breaking free of the "zip ties" binding their hands, which are not
as strong as the plastic flex cuffs often used in Iraq.
When Specialist Hunsaker tried to fix the zip ties, one of the
detainees lashed out and stabbed the specialist with a pocket knife,
Mr. Waddington said. At the same time, he said, another detainee
punched Specialist Clagett in the face, and all three detainees broke
free and ran. That is when, the lawyer said, the two soldiers opened
fire, killing the three Iraqis.
An Article 32 hearing in the case, which will determine if the suspects
will be court-martialed, is scheduled for Aug. 1 in Tikrit. Mr. Bergrin
said he planned to call as witnesses the Army colonel and captain who
he says gave the order to kill all military-age men on the island.

 Lawyers for 4 Accused Soldiers Say They Acted on Orders
Da quel che sembra, c'è un testimone solo per tutto questo.
E può solo testimoniare di un "sentito dire".
Non ha visto la scena, non ha visto le uccisioni, e si è fatto avanti
solo dopo mesi.
Mirco

on the island.
HE SAYS ...
-Stefano