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US Troops Kill Injured Iraqi Prisoner on Film
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US
marine shooting the wounded Iraqi prisoner in a Fallujah mosque,
according to this video footage by NBC.
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WASHINGTON
, November 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Several US
television networks aired footage of members of a
US
marine unit entering a mosque in Fallujah before one marine shot an
unarmed, wounded man in the head as he lay prone against a wall.
Television
networks said the marine who killed the wounded man had been detained
and could face prosecution.
The
reports said the unnamed marine had been wounded in the face the day
before the killing but had returned to duty almost immediately,
according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
CBS
News showed a still photo from the film depicting the marine standing
above the slumped figure aiming his rifle at the man’s body.
It
aired excerpts of a discussion between the marines.
According
to NBC correspondent Kevin Sites, who wrote the pool report on the
incident, one marine noticed one of the prisoners inside the Fallujah
mosque was still breathing, Reuters reported.
A
marine can be heard saying on the pool footage provided to Reuters
Television: “He's [expletive] faking he's dead. He faking he's
[expletive] dead.”
“The
marine then raises his rifle and fires into the man's head. The
pictures are too graphic for us to broadcast,” Sites said. No images
of the shooting were shown in the footage provided to Reuters.
Sites
said the shot prisoner “did not appear to be armed or threatening in
any way”.
“He's
dead now,” one marine in the squad shouts after the shooting.
NBC
said the film of the man being shot in the head was “too gruesome”
to be seen on screens.
Sites
said the mosque had been used by Iraqi fighters to attack US forces,
who stormed it and an adjacent building, killing 10 fighters and
wounding five, Reuters said.
He
added the wounded had been left in the mosque for others to pick up
and move to the rear for treatment. No reason was given why that had
not happened, it added.
The
sequence was captured on film by an embedded camera operator who
entered the mosque with the marine squad.
Other
networks including CNN, ABC and Fox News also showed the sequence.
Investigation
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A
deep humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Fallujah. |
Lieutentant
Colonel Bob Miller, a
US
military judge leading an investigation into the shooting, told NBC in
an interview that the rules of engagement in
Iraq
“authorize the marines to use force when presented with a hostile
act or hostile intent.”
Miller
added: “Any wounded -- even in this case wounded -- insurgent, who
does not pose a threat would not be considered hostile.”
The
Defense Department in
Washington
said it had no information about the incident.
International
law experts in the
Middle East
have expressed fury at the incident which, they said, is a flagrant
violation on Geneva Convention on the treatment of war prisoners.
“The
first Protocol added to the Geneva Convention of 1949 in 1977
stipulates that injured prisoners of war must enjoy adequate medical
and human treatment. What that American marine did in that mosque in
Fallujah is a war crime and he must be tried accordingly by an
independent authority,” head of International Law Dept. at
Cairo
University
, professor Salah Amer, told Al-Jazeera TV Tuesday, November 16.
“But
Washington had already taken precautions against trying its soldiers
before the International Court of Justice by signing bilateral
relations with the Iraqi Governing Council it had installed to avoid
paying for war crimes,” he added.
Amnesty
International Worried
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Fallujah
residents are fleeing the inferno. |
Hours
before the war crime in the Fallujah mosque came to light, human
rights watchdog Amnesty International has said it was deeply concerned
the rules of war designed to protect civilians and combatants have
been violated in Fallujah.
“Amnesty
International fears that civilians have been killed, in contravention
of international humanitarian law, as a result of failure by parties
to the fighting to take necessary precautions to protect
non-combatants,” the London-based group said in a report on its
website, according to AFP.
“We
are not getting the full picture of what is going on in Fallujah,”
Amnesty spokeswoman Nicole Choueiry told AFP Monday.
“Some
clarification needs to be made, not only to Amnesty but to the whole
world because no one has a clear picture of what is going on.
“It's
really unclear whether they have been abiding by (international law)
or not, but there are increasingly worrying reports in the media,”
Choueiry said.
“There
are increasing reports that civilians have died and we have been
asking for clarifications as to the rules of engagement and of the
total civilian casualties,” she said.
“There
are also worrying reports about the insurgents using civilian areas or
civilian targets to lure in combatants.”
In
one incident, some Iraqis are reported to have come out of a building
waving a white flag, Amnesty said. When a US Marine approached this
group, “insurgents opened fire from different directions”.
Twenty
Iraqi medical staff and dozens of other civilians were killed when a
missile hit a clinic on November 9, according to reports from a doctor
who survived the strike, the group said.
On
November 11 a British television program, Channel Four News, broadcast
footage in which a
US
soldier appeared to have fired one shot in the direction of a wounded
insurgent who was off screen.
The
soldier then walked away and said “he's gone”, Amnesty said.
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