Marine Faces Court-Martial for Falluja Killing

AlterNet

Associated Press reports:

The government failed twice to persuade jurors that members of a Marine squad wrongly killed unarmed detainees in Fallujah, Iraq. Now it's trying a third time.

A court-martial is scheduled to begin Tuesday at Camp Pendleton for Sgt. Jermaine Nelson, who has pleaded not guilty to unpremeditated murder and dereliction of duty in the November 2004 death of a detainee. The Marines were involved in vicious house-to-house fighting to recapture Fallujah from insurgents.

If convicted of murder, Nelson, of New York, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

He is the only remaining defendant in a case that has resulted in two defeats for the government. Nelson's squadmate, Sgt. Ryan Weemer, was acquitted by a military jury of the same charges in April. That jury consisted of eight Marines, all of whom served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Nelson's squad leader, former Sgt. Jose Luis Nazario, was acquitted last year in federal court in Riverside, Calif., on counts that included voluntary manslaughter. Nazario was beyond the reach of a court-martial because he had completed his military obligations.

Last November, the Los Angeles Times reported:

A graphic, vulgarity-laced interview in which a Marine described how he and two other Marines killed four unarmed prisoners in Iraq was played today during a preliminary hearing in the case.

Sgt. Jermaine Nelson, in a tape-recorded interview with a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, said he and Sgt. Ryan Weemer were ordered by Sgt. Jose Nazario to kill the prisoners as the Marines swept through a neighborhood in Fallouja in late 2004.

Several minutes of the tape were played at the hearing for Weemer, who faces murder and dereliction of duty charges. Nelson faces similar charges, and Nazario faces manslaughter charges in federal court in Riverside.

Nelson told the investigator that Nazario told him, "I'm not doing all this [expletive] by myself. You're doing one and Weemer is doing one."

Nelson said that he watched in shock as Nazario shot a kneeling prisoner at point-blank range: "He hit the dude in the forehead, the dude went down and there was blood . . . all over his [Nazario's] boots."

Weemer then used his service pistol to shoot one of the prisoners, Nelson said. "He shot him and the dude was on the ground and rolling and [Weemer] was shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting."

The case began when Weemer, who had left the Marine Corps, told a job interviewer from the Secret Service about the killings. The Marine Corps recalled him to active-duty so he could be charged.

Nelson and Weemer, in their interviews, said that Nazario ordered the killings after getting a radio message from a superior that ordered the Marines not to take time to process the prisoners according to the rules.

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