The Marine Corps should drop murder charges against a lieutenant who fatally shot two Iraqi detainees during a search for a terrorist hideout, an investigating officer recommended in an opinion made public Friday.
Second Lieutenant Ilario Pantano, a former Wall Street trader who rejoined the Marines after the Sept. 11 attacks, did make "serious errors in tactical judgment," Lieutenant Colonel Mark Winn wrote in an opinion dated Thursday.
But he said key witnesses and evidence failed to back up the accusation that Pantano shot the detainees last year while they were kneeling with their backs to him.
Pantano is stationed at the Marine base, where his Article 32 hearing concluded April 30.
Winn recommended withdrawing most charges against Pantano, and said one charge -- that he desecrated the bodies by reloading his weapon and repeatedly shooting them -- should be referred for nonjudicial punishment.
Prosecutors alleged Pantano intended to make an example of the two detainees by shooting them 60 times and hanging a sign over their bodies -- "No better friend, no worse enemy," a Marine slogan.
"We must never allow ourselves to vacate the moral high ground under the guise of `sending a message to these Iraqis and others' in order to intimidate," Winn wrote. "As officers in the United States Military, it is our sacred obligation to teach our junior men what is moral and just in war, and what is not."
Military authorities may choose to accept Winn's recommendation, give some form of administrative punishment or go ahead with a court-martial.
Pantano's attorney, Charles Gittins, said the report showed no criminal charges should have been brought against his client.
"If it had been competently investigated by the criminal investigators, we wouldn't be where we are today," Gittins said, noting that Winn concluded one of the victims was not shot in the back by Pantano, as prosecutors alleged.
Pantano's mother, Merry Pantano of New York, said Friday the hearing officer "must have realized that the prosecution had no case. Their case just fell apart."
Referring to the recommendation that Pantano face nonjudicial punishment for repeatedly shooting the Iraqis, his mother said it appeared her son was being "reprimanded for so zealously killing the enemy."
Prosecutors allege that Pantano, 33, killed the suspected insurgents in April 2004 because he believed they were launching mortars at his troops.
Pantano never denied shooting the men, but said he acted in self-defense after the men disobeyed his instructions and made a menacing move toward him.
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS