Marine pleads not guilty in Iraq grandfather death
Source: Reuters
(Adds charges against unit leader, paragraphs 3, 10-12) By Adam Tanner SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - A U.S. Marine who a colleague testified shot up to 10 bullets into an Iraqi grandfather pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to murder and other charges. At an arraignment at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, California, the attorney for Cpl. Trent Thomas said he was not guilty of murder, kidnapping and other charges in the April 2006 death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad in Hamdania, Iraq. Also on Tuesday, the top Marine general in the Middle East decided to go to trial against Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins, the unit leader who allegedly devised the murder plan, but would not seek the death penalty in the case. The case involving seven Marines and a Navy medic is one of several during the Iraq war in which U.S. armed service members are accused of crimes or abuses of Iraqi civilians. Three of the eight have pleaded guilty, and one, Petty Officer Melson Bacos, 21, has been sentenced to a year in prison. The three said the unit kidnapped the elderly Iraqi in the middle of the night and planted clues to suggest he was an insurgent. During his court-martial last month, Bacos said he watched Hutchins fire three rounds into Awad's head, and said Thomas pumped another seven to 10 rounds into the man's chest. "I felt sick to my stomach," he said. A military judge set a March trial date for Thomas, a St. Louis native who was on his third tour in Iraq. He won a Purple Heart when he was wounded in Falluja during his second tour. The other two men who pleaded guilty will be sentenced Wednesday and Thursday at Camp Pendleton. In a statement Tuesday, Lt. Gen. James Mattis, commanding general of the U.S. Marine Corps, said he would also proceed with a trial against Hutchins on murder, kidnapping, assault and other charges. In his testimony last month, Navy medic Bacos said Hutchins devised the plan to kidnap an Iraqi who was a suspected terrorist released from prison, but said the unit ended up grabbing a neighbor, Awad, instead. "He was just mad that they kept letting him go when he was a known terrorist," Bacos said.
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