Fw: Haditha Marine Frank Wuterich enters guilty plea

["Don Greenlaw" <dgreenlaw@cox.net>]

Forwarded.

Semper fi,
Don Greenlaw
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Dave Hollenbeck
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 10:42 AM
Subject: Haditha Marine Frank Wuterich enters guilty plea


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16690300




Sgt Frank Wuterich faced nine counts of manslaughter





The final US Marine to face charges over the killing of unarmed Iraqi 
civilians in Haditha in 2005 has pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty.

Sgt Frank Wuterich was one of eight Marines originally charged with murder 
or failure to investigate the killings.

The charges against six of them were dropped or dismissed, and one was 
acquitted.

Sgt Wuterich reached a plea deal to bring an end to the most notorious case 
against US troops from the Iraq war.

He faces a maximum of three months confinement, two-thirds forfeiture of pay 
and a rank demotion to private.

Before the plea, he faced several counts of manslaughter.

He is expected to be sentenced on Tuesday.

War's legacy
Sgt Wuterich's guilty plea ended an ongoing trial at Camp Pendleton, 
California, almost seven years after the events in question.

Prosecutors argued that on the day of the killings, Sgt Wuterich lost 
control after seeing a friend blown apart by a bomb, and then led the 
soldiers under his command on a rampage.

Among the dead were women, children and elderly people, including a man in a 
wheelchair.

His former squad members testified during the hearings that they did not 
receive any incoming gunfire during nor find any weapons at the scene of the 
killings.

Several of them said, however, that they feared insurgents were hiding 
nearby and they had not done anything wrong by opening fire.

While the events in Haditha occurred in November 2005, an investigation did 
not begin until a local human rights activist went public with video footage 
of the aftermath.

No immunity
A subsequent investigation by Time magazine suggested that most of the dead 
were shot by Marines - and in March 2006 a criminal investigation was begun.

The following month, three officers in charge of troops in Haditha were 
stripped of their command and reassigned.

Sgt Wuterich's trial was delayed for years by debate between the defence and 
prosecution - including whether or not they could show previously unseen 
footage from a 60 Minutes interview he gave to US network CBS in 2007.

Prosecutors eventually won the right to show the entire interview.

The Haditha killings were cited as a key reason why Iraqi officials refused 
to give US troops immunity from their court system.

That sticking point helped contribute to the eventual pullout of US troops 
from Iraq at the end of 2011.