Haditha Residents on Charged Marines: Let Us Have Them

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/world/middleeast/22cnd-reax.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Haditha Residents on Charged Marines: Let Us Have Them


Dr. Waleed Al-Obeidi, 41, the director-general of Haditha hospital

“If they plan to implement justice, then we welcome this step to refer the eight marines to the court, but we have our doubts in American justice. The verdict will be life sentences for four of them and the other four will be released, according to what we heard in the media. They blamed one soldier in the killing of a whole family, while it was carnage. The Iraqi government should have summoned those soldiers and executed them.”

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Tahseen Al-Hadithi, 51, cleric and imam of the Haditha mosque

“I prefer they won’t be executed, and to be handed over to Haditha people to get the punishment they deserve.”

Mr. Hadithi said this was not the only crime committed by American forces in Haditha, and noted that charges had been brought in similar incidents elsewhere in the country:

“This is the culture of the occupying marines in our country. If we go back and remember the funeral, and if President Bush could see the family, the children and the women and how the soldiers were moving from one house to another, killing them, what would his comment be? Execution is insufficient punishment to them, and I think they won’t be executed.”

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Sheikh Bairam Affan, 69, leader of the Al-Mawali tribe in the nearby town of Barwana

“I went to the U.S. forces in my capacity as a tribal sheikh along with other sheikhs after the massacre and asked the Americans to leave because we can not stop the resistance from attacking them in this area. I said to one of the American commanders if you kill people the same way as you did whenever you are attacked then no one will remain in Haditha.’

“They should get the death sentence because they carried out planned executions.”