Squad members take stand in Hamdaniya case - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Squad members take stand in Hamdaniya case

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — In clear, matter-of-fact voices, two former squad mates told a military court July 11 how they and six other squad members agreed to a plot to capture and kill a local Iraqi man the battalion suspected was an insurgent ringleader.

The two Marines testified that all eight agreed to a plan to snatch the suspected insurgent at his home in Hamdaniya, Iraq, on April 26, 2006. Weeks later, on a premature redeployment home, they said, the eight agreed to stick to their original story.

Their testimonies came during the trial of Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, a former team leader charged with premeditated murder, conspiracy, larceny, housebreaking, kidnapping, assault and making a false official statement in the Iraqi’s death.

Thomas, flanked by his defense attorneys, listened with little emotion as the two testified for the prosecution in the general court-martial, which began July 9 and will last two weeks. A jury of nine officers and enlisted Marines are hearing the case before a military judge, Lt. Col. David M. Jones.

Thomas is one of eight members of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, who were charged in the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, a 52-year-old retired policeman in Hamdaniya. Thomas has been held at the brig since the eight men returned to Camp Pendleton in late May 2006.

Pvt. John Jodka and Pvt. Jerry Shumate Jr. told the court July 11 that they and six other squad members, including Thomas, agreed to a plan briefed by Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III to grab and shoot Saleh Gowad, who they believed participated in attacks against the Marines.

Jodka and Shumate testified under grants of immunity. They each are serving 18-month and 21-month jail sentences, respectively, issued after pleading guilty to lesser charges.

Jodka testified that he participated in the plot willingly and he didn’t think the squad members’ actions were wrong.

“I believed in the plan, sir ... to kidnap and kill Saleh Gowad,” the bespectacled Jodka said in questioning by defense attorney Maj. Hasham Faraj. “I believed it was lawful, but based on the situation ... I believed this was the appropriate measure.”

“I knew ... it was outside the [rules of engagement] over there,” Jodka said. “We were justified in doing this,” he added.

According to testimony, a four-man “snatch” team went to Gowad’s house about 1 a.m. but didn’t find him there, so they went into a nearby house and grabbed Awad. They bound Awad and dragged him to a hole on a nearby street.

Hutchins ordered the squad to “get in a line and begin the ambush,” Jodka testified. At the sergeant’s order, most of the squad fired their weapons at him, he said, and one fired an AK47 assault rifle taken from a house.

Jodka testified the man got up and “ran about 20 meters” before he fell, and Hutchins gave the order to cease fire, but shortly later he heard “five to 10 shots” and several yelling, “Dead check.” Shumate testified Thomas fired “three to five” shots into Awad and he saw Hutchins shoot Awad “in the head.”

The squad members placed the AK47, spent casings and stolen shovel near Awad’s body and radioed their higher command that they had come under fire from a man placing a roadside bomb and had shot him dead.

Jodka said he was “very disappointed” that they did not get Gowad, the intended target. But he maintained that the squad’s action was right in trying to stop an insurgent who threatened Marines.

Jodka and Shumate testified that at least twice, none of the eight men took up Hutchins’ offer to “opt out.” The squad leader asked each member, one by one, if they were in on the plan. “I said yes,” Shumate said. Thomas “said yes.”

Shumate testified that he and seven others agreed to stick to the “false story” of what they originally reported to their battalion had transpired in Hamdaniya that night. They would tell anyone who asked, including investigators, that the squad encountered an insurgent digging a hole for a roadside bomb and got into a deadly firefight with him, he said.

Within two weeks of the incident, the squad members were confined at their Iraq base, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents began questioning them. “After they presented the real story — the truth — it was presented to me in Bacos’ and Jodka’s statements, after that I told them the truth,” Shumate testified.

In late May 2006, the infantry squad piled into the back of a 7-ton utility truck on an unexpected early departure home from Camp Fallujah. It was a reunion of sorts, “the first time the whole entire squad had been together since the investigation,” Jodka testified.

In the truck, he said, Marines peppered their platoon commander, 1st Lt. Nathan Phan, with many questions. They wondered what would happen to them when they landed back in the U.S. Phan, Jodka said, didn’t know. “We had to play it by ear and see where it went,” he said.

Within a day of arriving in California, the seven Marines and the corpsman were taken into custody and put into solitary confinement at the Camp Pendleton brig.