The Hindu : International : U.S. Marines under probe for cover-up

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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

International

International

U.S. Marines under probe for cover-up

Julian Borger

Massacre termed ``worse than Abu Ghraib''

Washington: Senior American Marine officers are under investigation for an alleged cover-up of a massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha last November — an atrocity being described in the U.S. Congress as ``worse than Abu Ghraib''.

News of a separate incident last month in Hamandiya, west of Baghdad, in which another Marine unit is alleged to have shot a man ``execution style'' and planted evidence to make him look like a militant, has raised concerns of a breakdown in discipline among Marines fighting in Iraq.

General flies to Iraq

The Marine corps commandant, General Michael Magee, has flown to Iraq to lecture his troops on the laws of war and was reported on Sunday to be considering dismissing high-ranking officers. Only junior prison guards were punished for the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal last year.

An unnamed senior Marine officer described as one of Gen Magee's confidants told Newsweek magazine: ``Mike thinks the fallout from Abu Ghraib would have been less damaging if senior heads had rolled, and rolled pretty swiftly.''

John Murtha, a Democratic Congressman and Marine veteran who has called for a complete withdrawal from Iraq, told an ABC News programme: ``We're set back every time something like this happens. This is worse than Abu Ghraib. There has to have been a cover-up.''

News of the killings in Haditha, a Sunni town 210 km north-west of Baghdad, is only beginning to reach the Arab world, but there is anxiety in Washington that the backlash could be stronger than the reaction to Abu Ghraib.

At least three Marines in the unit involved are expected to face homicide charges, and nine others could face lesser charges. Three officers in their chain of command have been relieved of duty. Time magazine, which broke the story of the massacre, quoted a Congressman as saying that the investigation might implicate other senior officers.

The first official report into the incident on November 19 claimed that the dead Iraqi civilians had been killed in a roadside bomb blast.

A subsequent investigation, triggered in part by Time's report and a video taken after the killings by a journalism student, found that many of the civilians, were rounded up in their homes and shot. —

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