Amerikaans Terrorisme 7

Democracy Now bericht: 'The U.S. military is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that marines shot and killed 15 civilians, including seven women and three children, in the Iraqi town of Haditha last November in an apparent act of revenge for the death of a U.S. soldier by a roadside bomb. A videotape obtained by Time Magazine shows that many of the victims were still in their nightclothes when they died. AMY GOODMAN: We are joined right now by one of the reporters for Time magazine who broke this story. Aparisim Ghosh is the chief international correspondent for Time magazine. He spent the last three-and-a-half years in Iraq and joins us today in our Firehouse studio. We called the Pentagon and invited them on the program, but the Pentagon's spokesperson Lt. Col. Barry Venable declined to join us, saying it would be “inappropriate to comment while an investigation is underway.” Aparisim Ghosh, we thank you for joining us.
APARISIM GHOSH: Hi, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the story. Your story in Time is called “One Morning in Haditha."
APARISIM GHOSH: The victims told us that the Marines came in and they killed everybody inside. In one house they threw a grenade into a kitchen. That set off a propane tank and nearly destroyed the kitchen and killed several people in that home. The scenes that were described by the survivors and the witnesses were incredibly bloody and very graphic. But they are, unfortunately, very commonplace in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Inside, you talked to -- you have the description of a nine-year-old girl.
APARISIM GHOSH: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about her and her family and what she says happened.
APARISIM GHOSH: Well, she was indoors with her family when the explosion took place. The explosion was loud enough to wake everybody up in the neighborhood.
AMY GOODMAN: The bomb that killed the Marine.
APARISIM GHOSH: The first explosion, yes. And she says when she heard gunshots – of course, she's a child, she was frightened. When the Marines stormed towards their home, her grandfather slipped into the next room, as is, apparently, was his custom to pray, to reach out for the family Koran and pray to God that this crisis would pass. On this occasion, the Marines came into the home. They entered the room where the grandfather was, and other members of the family, and killed him.
AMY GOODMAN: And she was left alive.
APARISIM GHOSH: She survived, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And her little brother.
APARISIM GHOSH: And her brother was injured by a piece of -- either by a bullet or a piece of shrapnel, we're not sure.
AMY GOODMAN: But her parents, her mother, her father, her grandparents --
APARISIM GHOSH: Her parents, her grandparents, I believe her uncle, were also killed.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, another house.
APARISIM GHOSH: Four houses in all, involving a total of -- indoors, total of 19 people, and four people outside.
AMY GOODMAN: And what, once you had more details like this, did the military respond, outside of saying that you were just buying the enemy propaganda?
APARISIM GHOSH: Well, once we had all these details and we were not getting any way with the Marines, we took the videotape and the evidence that we had to the senior-most military public affairs officer in Baghdad and showed him what we had. He then took that evidence and passed it on to his superior officers, recommending that they conduct a full and thorough inquiry. That inquiry is a two-step process. The first step has been completed.' Lees of luister verder: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/21/1418210