Families speak of US marines’ trauma

TWO US marines were severely traumatised after following orders to photograph corpses of unarmed Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by members of their unit, their families said yesterday.

The parents of Lance Corporal Andrew Wright, 20, and Lance Corporal Roel Ryan Briones, 21, both members of a Marine unit based at Camp Pendleton, California, said their sons were sent into the western Iraqi city of Haditha last November to help remove the bodies of as many as two dozen men, women and children who were shot.

While there, the two were ordered to photograph the scene with personal cameras they happened to be carrying the day of the attack, the families told The Associated Press in separate interviews.

Lance Cpl Briones’s mother, Susie, said her son saw the bodies of 23 dead Iraqis that day, including a decapitated child.

Ryan Briones told the Los Angeles Times that navy investigators had interrogated him twice in Iraq and wanted to know whether bodies had been tampered with. He turned over his camera but did not know what happened to it after that.

Susie Briones called the November 19 incident a “massacre” and said the military had done little to help her son, who goes by his middle name, deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I know Ryan is going through some major trauma right now,” she said.

“It was very traumatic for all of the soldiers involved with this thing.”

The details of what happened in Haditha are still murky. What is known is that a bomb rocked a military convoy and left one marine dead. Marines then shot dead unarmed civilians in a taxi at the scene and went into two homes and shot other people, according to Congressman John Murtha who has been briefed by military officials.

The incident has sparked two investigations – one into the deadly encounter itself and another into whether it was the subject of a cover-up. The Marine Corps had initially attributed 15 civilian deaths to the car bombing and a firefight with militants.