Santini ma chi ha ucciso i civili iracheni? Haditha charges dropped against top Marine officer

Haditha charges dropped against top Marine officer By Dan Whitcomb
Tue Jun 17, 7:44 PM ET



LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A military judge on Tuesday dismissed the case
against the highest-ranking U.S. Marine charged in the killing of 24
Iraqi civilians at Haditha, whittling down the list of those who must
still face justice for the 2005 incident to just the accused
ringleader.

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Military Judge Col. Steven Folsom dropped all charges against Lt. Col.
Jeffrey Chessani, who was accused of violating a lawful order and
dereliction of duty, at a hearing at the Camp Pendleton Marine base in
Southern California.

Folsom's decision means that, out of eight Marines originally charged
in December 2006, six have won dismissals of their charges and one has
been cleared at court martial.

The accused ringleader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, still faces court
martial. The proceedings against him, however, have been put on hold
pending the appeal of a pretrial ruling.

Folsom threw out the charges against Chessani, a 44-year-old Colorado
native, after finding that a four-star general who oversaw the case
could have been influenced by an investigator who later became his
adviser.

The judge ruled that military prosecutors could refile the case but it
was not immediately clear if they would do so. The prosecution could
also appeal his ruling.

Chessani's lawyer said the married father of six young children and
his legal team were "cautiously optimistic" that his two-year legal
battle was behind him and that he could retire.

"We hope its over. We believe it should be over," attorney Brain
Rooney said.

Chessani was the highest-ranking officer accused of wrongdoing in the
shootings at Haditha, which were first reported in Time magazine and
portrayed by Iraqi witnesses as a "massacre" of unarmed civilians.

The witnesses claimed angry Marines killed the two dozen men, women
and children out of revenge after a popular comrade, Lance Cpl. Miguel
"TJ" Terrazas, died in a roadside bombing.

The reports brought international condemnation on U.S. troops in Iraq
and famously inspired Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania
and critic of the war, to charge that the Marines had killed the
civilians "in cold blood."

Defense attorneys said the civilians died during a pitched battle with
insurgents in and around Haditha that followed the death of Terrazas.

Rooney said that the fact that seven of the eight Marines had been
cleared or no longer faced charges proved that the events at Haditha
were "not the massacre that Time magazine and John Murtha made it out
to be."

"We've had to go through a two-year process to prove what we knew from
the beginning," he said. "You need to trust what your battlefield
commanders are telling you and give them the benefit of the doubt."

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Cynthia Osterman)