Three US Marines to be tried for murder in Iraq case

WASHINGTON - Three US Marines will be tried on murder charges without the possibility of the death penalty in the April shooting of an Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania in central Iraq, the military said today.

Lt. Gen. James Mattis, the top Marine general in the Middle East, decided that Pfc. John Jodka, Cpl. Marshall Magincalda and Lance Cpl. Jerry Shumate will face courts-martial in the shooting death on April 26 of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, the Marines said in a statement from Camp Pendleton, California.

The three were among seven Marines and a Navy medic accused of dragging the 52-year-old Iraqi from his home, shooting him dead and placing an assault rifle and a shovel next to his body to create the appearance that he was an insurgent planting a roadside bomb.

The Hamdania shooting is one of several in which US troops are accused of killing civilians in Iraq, including the deaths of 24 people in Haditha in November last year.

Mattis threw out several lesser charges against the three Marines and dismissed an assault charge against a fourth in a separate incident in the same town, west of Baghdad.

He decided to take the cases to trial after the military held so-called Article 32 hearings to examine the allegations. No trial dates were announced.

Following the lead of military prosecutors, Mattis decided not to seek the death penalty, which was available because the murder was deemed premeditated.

Shumate also will be tried on an assault charge for a separate April 10 incident in the same town involving another Iraqi man, Khalid Hamad Daham.

In that incident, the Marines said, Mattis dismissed an assault charge against Lance Cpl. Henry Lever, who no longer faces any charges.

- REUTERS