|
Defend Our Marines / September 12, 2007
______________________________________________________
The government’s case against a
squad of Marines accused of murdering at least four Iraqi
insurgents at Fallujah in November 2004 took another twist when the
government decided Tuesday to withdraw its charge of unpremeditated
murder against Sgt. Jermaine Nelson.
The former assaultman in the
beleaguered 3rd Squad, 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company
was charged several weeks ago at Camp Pendleton. Marines
from the squad are charged in two separate incidents a year apart with
murder. The government’s inexplicable and
unexplained action dismissing its case against Nelson after he
admitted killing a prisoner promises to unleash another battering
storm at Camp Pendleton, CA.
Nelson is currently being prosecuted by
the same team prosecuting the Haditha incident. Lieutenant Colonel
Sean Sullivan is the chief prosecutor against Nelson. Various lawyers
speculated that dismissing the case against Nelson Tuesday was merely
an administrative matter so jurisdiction can be handed off somewhere
else and the charges refiled. The dismissal is said to come without a
deal or plea arrangement of any kind.
Lieutenant Colonel M. K. Jamison, a
Camp Pendleton SJA, Tuesday morning
notified Capt Joseph I Grimm, Nelson’s appointed Marine
Corps lawyer, that the charges against Nelson have been withdrawn. At
the time of this report it is not clear whether Nelson will be charged
again in some other venue, granted immunity and forced to testify, or
something else entirely unexpected. All are possibilities, several
lawyers agreed. So far nothing about the Fallujah murder investigation
has been typical.
At the center of the allegations is
much-maligned 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd
Battalion, 1st Marines, once a highly regarded, tight-knit
unit of fighting Marines who shared uncommon valor.
The United States vs. Mr. Jose M. Nazario
and Sergeant Jermaine Nelson cases brought more than a month ago by
the Naval Criminal Investigative Service ensured its reputation would
remain uncertain. Nazario is charged with two counts of voluntarily
manslaughter for intentionally killing two Iraqi prisoners of war.
Nelson was charged under military law with unpremeditated murder – a
crime of similar magnitude.
The charges were triggered by the
revelations of former Corporal Ryan Weemer, an Illinois lad with a
powerful conscience. Weemer told his tale to a Secret Service
polygraph examiner while seeking employment in the uniformed division
of the Secret Service. Eventually his allegations ended up in the
hands of the NCIS.
Weemer’s revelations last fall triggered
an investigation by NCIS Special Agent Mark O. Fox, a detective with
unlimited resources to criss-cross the country for eight months
finding witnesses from Fallujah. He continues to pursue the case.
In addition to Nelson, who incriminated
himself and several other former squad members, the government has
identified at least six witnesses with extensive knowledge of the
allegations. With the exception of one Marine demolitions man all of
them were members of 3rd Squad, Third Platoon.
"If my word isn’t good enough, nothing
would be."
The platoon was ably led at Fallujah by 1st
Lieutenant Jesse A. Grapes, a Sunnyvale California Catholic school
administrator who left the service shortly after Fallujah to pursue a
more peaceful existence. Then his son died. He was still recovering
from that tragedy when Fox showed up to get a statement about the
events at Fallujah. Fox interviewed Grapes at his school last spring.
Shortly afterwards the Third Platoon’s brilliant former leader was
recalled to active duty. His consolation was being promoted to
captain.
Marines who served with him say Grapes,
now 29, is a hard-charging small unit tactician who literally wrote a
book about modern urban warfare following his ferocious experience in
Fallujah.
They said he is considered a person of
high morale and physical courage who led 3rd Platoon from
the front for more than two years. Grapes’ biggest claim to fame is
engineering the rescue of numerous trapped Marines at the infamous
“Hell House” by leading the way.
Shedding his body armor, Grapes crawled
through the bent bars of a window on his back in withering fire to get
a shot at an insurgent shooter who had already wounded several Marines
trying to take the house. His efforts resulted in three wounded
Marines – including two Navy Cross recipients – being taken to safety.
Grapes once said he joined the Marine
Corps after 9/11 to serve his country. By all accounts he serves it
very well. He also says he knows nothing about the alleged capture or
order to kill the prisoners. If he had heard such a thing he would
have immediately stopped it, he said, but he remembers nothing
remotely resembling the allegations.
The former 3rd Platoon
commander gave Fox a candid, forthright statement while being
questioned by Fox. He is also a principled man who refused to submit
to a polygraph examination to underscore his veracity. Grapes told Fox
last February that no machine could trump his honor. If his word
wasn’t good enough, he said in his sworn statement, nothing would be.
Under Grapes’ command at Fallujah was
Staff Sergeant Jon Marcinek Chandler, now a medically retired Gunnery
Sergeant in Florida who was a late comer to 3rd Platoon. He
was a platoon sergeant facing his first serious combat at Fallujah.
Chandler would be grievously wounded on November 13, 2004 in a
face-to-face duel with foreign fighters. He talked to Fox in the
parking lot of the Florida hospital where he is still being treated
for his wounds. He knows nothing about the allegations and gave a
sworn statement to that effect.
Fox's hunt
Fox found Lance Corporal Samuel
Severtsgaard at Camp Pendleton in early December 2006. The former 3rd
Platoon rifleman was one of Fox’s early witnesses and a vulnerable one
as well. Severtsgaard was anxiously waiting to leave the Corps and get
on with his life when Fox came to call. At Fallujah, Severtsgaard was
a lance corporal, a dependable Marine who created his own legend in a
fierce duel for carrying around a live grenade he couldn’t throw.
Severtsgaard’s good friend is Cory James
Carlisle, 25, on a mission to a Latter Day Saints Church to Elkhardt,
Indiana when Fox tracked him down. He gave two statements. Carlisle
may be the ace in the government’s hand. His testimony, sworn before
an elder of the Mormon Church, bears powerful witness. At Fallujah he
was hit so hard by insurgent rifle fire it twisted his leg around
backwards.
Carlisle’s friend James Prentice was
another Marine Fox interviewed. He was interviewed twice, the last
time at the NCIS Office at Camp Pendleton in April, 2007. In November
2004 Prentice was fighting for his life at Fallujah, a SAW gunner in
Nazario’s squad. Like Carlisle, he was confronted by a deadly enemy
that tried repeatedly to kill him at ranges so close he could smell
his assailant’s body odor. At Fallujah his ability with a SAW was
undisputed.
Another witness uncovered by Fox is Cpl.
Pedro Garcia, a former assaultman assigned to Nazario’s squad at
Fallujah. He was there to “breach” any obstacles preventing the
Marines from gaining entry into a house. In this case it was a steel
gate blocking their way. Garcia tried blowing it with C-4 explosive
and then asked Nelson to take a picture of his handiwork to send back
home to Crystal City, Texas. Garcia wanted to remember the first house
he ever breached. Fox interviewed him twice at Camp Pendleton, making
Garcia confirm the second time that he had not been threatened or
promised anything for his cooperation.
The government’s case is stitched together
from the accounts provided by the aforementioned Marines. Tomorrow
Nazario is expected to plead “Not Guilty” in US District Court for
Central California in Riverside for the claims some of them made. He
was indicted on the same testimony provided by the witness statements
that were given to Fox. Some of them are sworn and some are not.
Conspicuous by its absence is a statement from Ryan Weemer, who is
expected to be back in uniform sometime soon to either face criminal
prosecution or be a material witness in the case.
Murder in Fallujah?
The government’s case is built around the
testimony of Carlisle, Nelson, Prentice and Weemer. Despite repeated
assertions for more than two years that he did not participate in any
unlawful killings at Fallujah, Weemer is now accused of killing one of
the captured insurgents with his 9mm pistol. He told one of the
witnesses who saw him standing over the body that the Iraqi “was going
for his weapon.”
Nazario is accused of killing two men, and
Nelson, by his own admission, is accused of killing one insurgent.
Weemer and Nelson both maintain they were ordered to participate in
the executions, sources said.
According to the witness statements the
encounter with the four insurgents developed about 0830 after Lance
Corporal Juan E. Segura was taken away to the Battalion Aide Station
suffering from a mortal gunshot wound. Segura died shortly after
arriving at the BAS.
Meanwhile, at least four Iraqis were seen
by members of nearby 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon
fleeing into some house in front of the platoon’s position. Nazario
was ordered to take his squad in pursuit, the former 2nd
Squad leader has said. Accounts about why Nazario was order to pursue
differ, but the witnesses agree that moments later they approached a
house where the insurgents were seen to disappear. It was guarded by a
stout steel gate.
Cpl. Garcia placed a satchel charge
containing the plastic explosive C-4 against the gate to breach the
barrier. Cpl. Joe Hamen, taking cover two buildings away at a mortar
position, said he felt the blast slam through the nearby walls when
the charge went off.
The charge failed to completely breach the
door and the Marines sought a different access. Prentice remembers
finding an unlocked front door. Other Marines have different
recollections. Regardless, the squad found itself inside a two-story
house where four Iraqi men had taken refuge.
The house was on the hard crust of
Fallujah’s outer defenses, the place where US Army tanks were supposed
to lay waste to local resistance. Giant M1A2 Abrams tanks supported by
Bradleys with 25mm chain guns and TOW missiles were supposed to clear
a path. A month before the Fallujah battle Marines in similar tanks
had visited the sector and received a huge volume of rocket and mortar
fire. It was a killing zone.
The squad took fire when it went inside
the house, several Marines recounted to Fox. Some of the witnesses
recall going inside because enemy mortars were landing too close for
comfort.
Half the squad, led by Nazario, went
inside to clear the building. They went in a stack that included
Weemer, Carlisle and Prentice.
In the first room at the top of the stairs
were for Iraqi men dressed in the track suit “uniforms” of the
insurgency, there were arms nearby – Kalashnikovs and full magazines –
but nothing in their hands. Outside enemy mortar fire, automatic
weapons fire, and rocket-propelled grenades turned the streets into
deadly beaten zones. During the melee two nearby Marine Corps M-1s
received disabling damage.
Second Squad leader and Navy Cross
recipient R.J. Mitchell, situated across the street from Nazario’s
squad, remembers seeing four or five unarmed Iraqis run into a house
from another one where the Marines had received a heavy volume of
fire. He remembers a demo man putting a 25-pound satchel charge
against the wall outside their hidey hole and blowing them to pieces.
It could have been the same charge Garcia laid or something else.
Nobody knows.
Upstairs in the house occupied by
Nazario’s squad things got ugly. All four of the Iraqis were lying on
the floor with their backs against the wall in front of the stairs.
The stacked Marines took the Iraqis prisoner, but did not bind them.
What happened next is anybody’s guess.
Three of the witnesses say it was cold blooded murder. Three of the
witness said it never happened at all.
One of the witnesses who said it happened
claims the order to kill the prisoners came over Nazario’s handheld
PRC-119 radio.
“Make it happen,” somebody said.
Another witness, the platoon radio
operator who was wounded at both Fallujah and Haditha, said no such
conversation ever took place or he would have heard it. He said there
was never ever a reference to enemy prisoners of war during the entire
two-month campaign. Another witness says somebody else was in charge
of prisoners so he didn’t know anything about it.
None of the Iraqis survived.
Three witnesses say the prisoners were all
killed upstairs. Three died in one room and another in the next door
kitchen. They claim Nelson, Weemer, and Nazario were the shooters.
Nelson reportedly said as much himself. It
is unclear if he had legal counsel when he talked to Fox the first
time. One lawyer said Nelson described his efforts in detail assuming
he had done his distasteful duty as well as possible. Nelson doesn’t
have civilian counsel.
Another lawyer said Nelson “threw Nazario
and Weemer under the bus.”
Nelson is currently defended by a Marine
SJA named Captain Joseph Grimm. Grimm is also defending Marines in
several other high profile cases.
Nazario is represented only by civilian
attorneys because he is charged in civilian court with voluntary
manslaughter. Last week a federal grand Jury in Riverside handed up a
two-count indictment against him. Nazario’s lead counsel is Kevin
Barry McDermott, a Tustin, California lawyer also representing former
Kilo Company C.O. Capt. Luke McConnell in the Haditha investigation.
Nazario, a probationary patrolman in
Riverside, California when he was arrested, hasn’t made any kind of
statement at all. He is expected to plead not guilty at his
arraignment in federal court in Riverside on Thursday.
Nathaniel R. Helms
Defend Our Marines
12
September 2007
Note: Nat Helms is a Contributing Editor to Defend Our
Marines. He is a Vietnam vet, journalist, combat reporter, and, most
recently, author of
My Men Are My Heroes: The Brad Kasal Story (Meredith Books, 2007). |