Press Accounts Suggest Military 'Cover-Up' in Ishagi Killings

Press Accounts Suggest Military 'Cover-Up' in Ishagi Killings
By Greg Mitchell
Editor & Publisher

Saturday 03 June 2006

The U.S military said Saturday it had found no wrongdoing in the March 15 raid on a home in Ishaqi that left nine Iraqi civilians dead. But, as with the apparent massacre in Haditha, will a military "coverup" in this case come undone? E&P coverage from back in March, and other evidence, suggest that the official story may soon unravel.

The Iraqi police charge that American forces executed the civilians, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old baby. The BBC has been airing video of the dead civilians, mainly children, who appeared to be shot, possibly at close range. Photographs taken just after the raid for the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, and reports at the time by Reuters and Knight Ridder, also appear to back up the charge of an atrocity.

After the attack, American officials said that they had demolished the house in an airstrike after insurgents fired from the building. One insurgent, two women and a child were killed in the attack, they said.

After the Haditha killings, the military said all of the Iraqis had been killed in an explosion or a firefight.

"Allegations that the troops executed a family living in this safe house, and then hid the alleged crimes by directing an airstrike, are absolutely false," today's U.S. military statement said. It did not explain how so many children had been shot and killed.

A spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said today's report, which cleared the U.S. soldiers, was unfair. The government will demand an apology and compensation, the spokesman said.

More than two months ago, however, E&P covered the account by a Knight Ridder reporter who had obtained a police report on the incident. Here is our March 20, 2006, story, followed by the reporter's statements on a popular U.S. radio program.

New York - Matthew Schofield, a Knight Ridder reporter in Baghdad, has obtained an Iraqi police report which, he reveals today, accuses American troops of executing 11 people, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old infant, in the aftermath of a raid last Wednesday on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

The villagers were killed after American troops herded them into a single room of the house, according to the police. Then the soldiers burned three vehicles, killed the villagers' animals and blew up the house. Knight Ridder has distributed a copy of the report.

A U.S. military spokesman, Major Tim Keefe, said that the U.S. military has no information to support the allegations and that he had not heard of them before a Knight Ridder reporter brought them to his attention Sunday. "We're concerned to hear accusations like that, but it's also highly unlikely that they're true," he said. He added that U.S. forces "take every precaution to keep civilians out of harms' way. The loss of innocent life, especially children, is regrettable."

Just last week, Navy investigators announced they are looking into whether Marines intentionally killed 15 Iraqi civilians - four of them women and five of them children - during fighting last November in Haditha.

Schofield points out that the report of the latest killings "is unusual because it originated with Iraqi police and because Iraqi police were willing to attach their names to it....

"Brig. Gen. Issa al-Juboori, who heads the center, said that his office assembled the report on Thursday and that it accurately reflects the direction of the current police investigation into the incident."

"According to police, military and eyewitness accounts, U.S. forces approached the house at around 2:30 a.m. and a firefight ensued. By all accounts, in addition to exchanging gunfire with someone inside the house, U.S. troops were supported by helicopter gunships, which fired on the house.

"But the accounts differ on what took place after the firefight.

"According to the U.S. account, the house collapsed because of the heavy fire. When U.S. forces searched the rubble they found one man, the al-Qaida suspect, alive. He was arrested. They also found a dead man they believed to be connected to al-Qaida, two dead women and a dead child.

"But the report filed by the Joint Coordination Center, which was based on a report filed by local police, said U.S. forces entered the house while it was still standing.

"'The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men,' the report said. 'Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals.'

"The report identified the dead by name, giving their ages. The two men killed were 22 and 28. Of the women, one was 22, another was 23, a third was 30 and the fourth was 75. Two of the children were 5 years old, two were 3, and the fifth was 6 months old, the document said."



Schofield subsequently appeared on the Democracy Now radio program with Amy Goodman. There, according to a transcript, he said:

"We were talking with the police officer who was first on the scene earlier today. He explained the scene of arriving. He said they waited until U.S. troops had left the area and it was safe to go in. When they arrived at the house, it was in rubble. I don't know if you've seen the photos of the remains of the house, but there was very little standing.

"He said they expected to find bodies under the rubble. Instead, what they found was in one room of the house, in one corner of one room, there was a single man who had been shot in the head. Directly across the room from him against the other wall were ten people, ranging from his 75-year-old mother-in-law to a six-month-old child, also several three-year-olds - a couple three-year-olds, a couple five-year-olds, and four other - three other women.

"Lined up, they were covered, and they had all been shot. According to the doctor we talked to today, they had all been shot in the head, in the chest. A number of - you know, generally, some of them were shot several times. The doctor said it's very difficult to determine exactly what kind of caliber gun they were shot with. He said the entry wounds were generally small and round, the exit wounds were generally very large. But they were lined up along one wall.

"There was a blanket over the top of them, and they were under the rubble, so when the police arrived, and residents came to help them start digging in, they came across the blankets. They picked the blankets up. They say, at that point, that the hands were handcuffed in front of the Iraqis. They had been handcuffed and shot. And the Iraqi assumption is that they were shot in front of the man across the room. They came to be facing each other.

"There is nothing to corroborate that. The U.S. is now investigating this matter, along with the Haditha matter. That's kind of where we stand right now."

-------