A Marine testified Thursday that he saw a roomful of frightened women and children moments before they were killed by his squad mates in Haditha, Iraq, but said he did not see who killed them.

Lance Cpl. Humberto Mendoza testified as the first witness at a preliminary military hearing for Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 27. Wuterich was charged with murdering 18 Iraqis in a bloody combat operation that left 24 Iraqi civilians dead, but at the outset of Thursday's hearing prosecutors withdrew one murder count.

The number of murder counts makes Wuterich's case the biggest to have emerged against any U.S. service member to have served in Iraq. The case centers on whether Wuterich, who had never experienced combat before, acted within Marine rules of engagement when he shot men by a car and then led his squad in a string of house raids.

One of Wuterich's military defense attorneys, Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, said the government was no longer charging Wuterich with murdering an Iraqi man who died in the final house cleared by Marines, leaving him charged with 17 counts of murder.

The charge was withdrawn after the general overseeing the case dismissed charges against another Marine accused of killing three other men in the same room of the house, ruling that they posed a legitimate threat, Vokey said.

Mendoza described the events of Nov. 19, 2005, as a fast-flowing series of engagements. After a Marine Humvee driver was killed in a roadside bomb, the troops raided several homes. At one house Wuterich gave an order to shoot on sight as Marines waited for a response after knocking on the door, said Mendoza.

During a subsequent search of the house, Mendoza said he received an order from another Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, to shoot seven women and children he had found in a rear bedroom.

"When I opened the door, the first thing I see is womens and kids laying down on a bed," Mendoza, who is from Venezuela and has a heavy accent, recalled seeing in the second house he helped raid. "I believe they were scared."

"I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat ... they looked scared."

After leaving the room Mendoza told Tatum what he had found. "I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said 'Well, shoot them,'" Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan. "And what did you say to him?" Sullivan asked. "I said 'But they're just women and children.' He didn't say nothing."

Source: Pravda  

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