WASHINGTON — A total of nine US soldiers have been charges, in two separate cases, of killing Iraqi civilians, the latest revelation of cold-blooded killing of innocent civilians in the Arab country.
Seven marines and a navy corpsman were charged on Wednesday, June 22, with premeditated murder of a disabled Iraqi civilian, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"Based on the findings of a criminal investigation, the marines and the corpsman have been charged with offenses including kidnapping, murder and conspiracy in connection with the death of an Iraqi civilian in Hamdania, Iraq," said Marine Colonel Stewart Navarre.
The soldiers were accused of breaking into the home of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, knocking him to the ground and dragging him away with his hands and feet bound.
They shot the 52-year-old disabled man in the face and then planted a rifle on his body to make it appear as if he were a militant.
The soldiers were charged with premeditated murder, larceny, conspiracy, housebreaking, assault, kidnapping and obstruction to justice.
Five of them were also charged with making false official statements about the killing, which took place on April 26.
They could face the death penalty as a conviction on a charge of premeditated murder carries a penalty of death or life in prison under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.
Navarre said it was too early to say whether military prosecutors would seek the death penalty if charges of premeditated murder are referred to a court martial.
Another Killing
In a similar case, a fourth US soldier was charged with premeditated murder in the shooting death of three Iraqi detainees near the Muthana Chemical Complex in Salaheddin province on May 9.
Three of his fellow marines have already been charged in the May 9 killing, Reuters said.
The four were also found to have threatened to kill a fellow soldier if he told authorities the truth about the case.
All four soldiers face a possible death penalty.
The case is one of a cluster involving charges of US troops killing Iraqi civilians.
Last November, US soldiers killed 24 Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children, near Haditha as they had gone on rampage after their patrol was attacked.
An average of one Iraqi civilian every day was killed by US forces during 2005 in incidents at checkpoints or roadblocks or alongside convoys, according to statistics compiled by the US military in Baghdad.
The actions of American troops have earned the outrage even of the new Iraqi government.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has lashed out at the "regular occurrence" of violence by American troops against Iraqi civilians.
The US army has recently decided to give ethic training to all its 130,000 troops in the Arab country.
Stop Bloodshed
In a related development, the Iraqi parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani asked the US ambassador Wednesday to investigate the US killing of 15 Iraqis at a poultry farm in a village northeast of Baghdad.
He had asked Zalmy Khalilzad to launch a "quick and transparent investigation" into the killing, his aides said in a statement.
The US military claimed on Tuesday, June 20, that its forces killed 15 gunmen in the Qaduri Ali al-Shahin village, 13km northwest of Baghdad.
Iraqi police and witnesses said the dead were civilians, including a child.
"The Iraqi leadership should not fail to take action in order to stop the bloodshed of ... Iraqis," said the statement.
Iraqis recently told Reuters they were unsurprised by US killing of civilians, complaining that such grisly aggressions were part of pattern of US behavior in their country.
A British soldier has quit the army in disgust of the "illegal and immoral" practices of the American troops.
"As far as the Americans were concerned, the Iraqi people were sub-human, untermenschen," Ben Griffin, a trooper in the Special Air Service's counter-terrorist team, told the Telegraph on Sunday, March 12, using the term used by the Nazis to describe Jews and Russians.
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