US warning on Iraq deaths probe

The top military adviser to the US president says a probe into whether US marines deliberately killed a group of Iraqi civilians must not be prejudged.

But Gen Peter Pace said there would be charges if marines were found to have killed the civilians in Haditha last November and tried to cover it up.

The Pentagon has said investigations into the incident are nearly finished.

Some US lawmakers have warned Haditha could be a more serious blow to US standing than the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Roadside bomb

The early official US accounts from Haditha said 15 people and insurgents had been killed by a bomb and firefight.

But reports from Iraqi witnesses and in the US media allege that, after a roadside bomb had killed a colleague, marines went on a rampage and may have killed as many as 24 people.

The Wall St Journal quoted civilian and military officials close to the investigations as saying evidence suggested the marines had killed the civilians, including women and children, without provocation.

The officials told the newspaper several marines were likely to be charged with murder and others with attempting to cover up the incident.

But Gen Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told US television that “it would be premature for me to judge the outcome”.

He said even if charges followed, it should not deflect from the “99.9% who are doing their job exactly the way the American people expect them to”.

But he added: “If the allegations as they are being portrayed in the newspapers turn out to be valid, then of course there’ll be charges.”

Extradition

There are two investigations pending - one into the events of 19 November and the other into whether there was a cover-up.

The US military said in statements issued after the incident that 15 Iraqi civilians had been killed by the blast of a roadside bomb, or in a subsequent firefight between US marines and insurgents.

But local Iraqis told a different story.

A 10-year-old girl told The Times of London last week that US soldiers deliberately shot and killed almost her entire family as she lay hiding in the corner.

Democratic Congressman and former marine, Jim Murtha, has said he has been briefed by military officials and he believes civilians in Haditha were murdered and the incident was covered up.

“They killed innocent civilians in cold blood. And that’s what the report is going to tell,” he said.

The Wall St Journal this week quoted US officials as saying they feared that new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki might demand the extradition of US personnel involved in the incident.

Although bilateral agreements mean marines can only be tried under the US military system, the officials fear Mr Maliki might try to establish his tough credentials, sparking a standoff.

The incident is being compared in the US to the Abu Ghraib jail scandal in which US military personnel abused Iraqi prisoners in 2003 and 2004.

Last week, President George W Bush said the US had been paying for those events “for a long time”.

BBC