A Marine officer presiding over an investigation of civilian deaths at Haditha has criticized the Corps for prosecuting only some of the senior officers who failed to report the incident in the Iraqi town.
Marine Maj. Thomas McCann leveled the charge in a June 8 investigative report obtained Monday by The Examiner.
It came in the case of Capt. Randy W. Stone, a military lawyer facing dereliction of duty charges for not passing word up the chain of command that Marines killed at least 15 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November 2005.
McCann wrote that Stone’s pre-trial hearing at Camp Pendleton, Calif. uncovered evidence that other officers also heard reports of a possible atrocity, but did not notify senior officers at the battalion or division level, as required by Marine regulations.
“Other information presented during the hearing indicated the accused was selectively singled out for prosecution,” McCann wrote. “Despite significantly more experience and access to the same information, officers senior to the accused have not been charged. Each of these officers is under the same duty as the accused to report law of war violations…”
The Marine Corps has charged Stone and three other officers with failing to report what they heard. In addition, the Corps plans to court-martial three enlisted Marines on murder charges.
A criminal investigation was not launched until 2006 after Time magazine published an account of the killings.
In Stone’s case, McCann recommended to Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of Marine forces in U.S. Central Command, that the case be handled administratively rather than by a court-martial. A spokesman for Mattis declined to comment on McCann’s report.
Charles Gittins, Stone’s civilian defense attorney, told The Examiner, “The investigating officer’s report demonstrated there was no basis for criminal charges against Captain Stone in the first place. It also discloses that highly experienced commanders, including the division commander, were singularly disinterested in learning the facts surrounding the deaths of innocent Iraqis after they were properly reported by Captain Stone’s unit.”
McCann said there was a “complete failure” by Stone and other Marine lawyers in Iraq to bring the Haditha case to the attention of their superiors. Stone was “negligent in failing to contact his higher headquarters regarding the killings.”
