Marine removed from front after prisoner shot dead

An American Marine is under investigation after being videotaped fatally shooting of a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a Fallujah mosque.

The dramatic footage was taken by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC television, who said three other prisoners wounded in the mosque had also apparently been shot by the Marines.

The incident happened when the Marines 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, returned to the Fallujah mosque on Saturday. Sites was embedded with the unit.

Sites reported that a different Marine unit had come under fire from the mosque on Friday. Those Marines stormed the building, killing 10 men and wounding five. The Marines said the fighters in the mosque had been armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 rifles.

The Marines had treated the wounded, he reported, left them behind and continued with their drive to retake the Iraqi city from insurgents.

The same five men were still in the mosque on Saturday, Sites reported.

On the video, as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.

“He’s (expletive) faking he’s dead!”

“Yeah, he’s breathing,” another Marine is heard saying.

“He’s faking he’s (expletive) dead!” the first Marine said.

The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner lying on the floor of the mosque.

The video shown by NBC and provided to the network pool was blacked out at that point and did not show the bullet hitting the man. But a rifle shot could be heard.

“He’s dead now,” a Marine is heard saying.

The shooting is shown so quickly that it is impossible to tell whether the body was moving before the shot. The only movement which can be seen is the body flinching at the moment the bullet hits.

The camera then showed two Americans pointing weapons at another Iraqi lying motionless. But one of the Marines steps back as the man stretches out his hand, motioning that he is alive. The other Marine stands his ground, but neither of them fires.

The blacked out portion of the videotape showed the bullet striking the man in the upper body, possibly the head. His blood splattered on the wall behind him and his body went limp.

Sites reported a Marine in the same unit had been killed just a day earlier when he tended to the booby-trapped dead body of an insurgent.

NBC reported that the Marine seen shooting the wounded Iraqi had himself been shot in the face the day before, but quickly returned to duty.

A spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters in the Pentagon, Major Doug Powell, said the incident was “being investigated.” He had no further details.

The US military today that the Marines are investigating an allegation of the unlawful use of force in the death of an enemy combatant.

The Marine has been withdrawn from the battlefield pending the results of the investigation,.

“We follow the law of armed conflict and hold ourselves to a high standard of accountability,” said Lieutenant General John Sattler, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

“The facts of this case will be thoroughly pursued to make an informed decision and to protect the rights of all persons involved.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is mandated to uphold the Geneva Conventions on warfare, was trying to contact representatives in Iraq to find out what they had been able to determine about the case.

The Third Geneva Convention, the section of the 1949 treaty that applies to prisoners of war, says “persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat (out of combat) by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.”

It adds that “the wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.”

The judge advocate general heading the investigation, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Miller, said that depending on the evidence, it could be reasonable to conclude the Marine was acting in self-defence.

“The policy of the rules of engagement authorise the Marines to use force when presented with a hostile act or hostile intent,” Miller said. “So they would have to be using force in self-defence, yes.”

“Any wounded – in this case insurgents – who don’t pose a threat would not be considered hostile,” said Miller.

Charles Heyman, a senior defence analyst with Jane’s Consultancy Group in Britain, defended the Marine’s actions, saying it was possible the wounded man was concealing a firearm or grenade.

“You can hear the tension in those Marines’ voices. One is showing, ‘He’s faking it. He’s faking it,”’ Heyman said. “In a combat infantry soldier’s training, he is always taught that his enemy is at his most dangerous when he is severely wounded.”

If the injured man makes even the slightest move, “in my estimation they would be justified in shooting him.”