A Marine testified that he saw a roomful of frightened women and children moments before they were killed by his squad mates in Haditha, Iraq, but he said he did not see who shot them.
Lance Corporal Humberto Mendoza was the first witness on Thursday at a hearing to determine whether Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, 27, will face a court-martial on charges of mur-dering 17 civilians.
Wuterich had been charged with murdering 18 Iraqis in a bloody combat operation that left 24 civilians dead, but at the outset of Thursday's hearing prosecutors withdrew one murder count.
While the number of suspected murders makes Wuterich's case the biggest to have emerged against any US service member to have served in Iraq, the hearing comes after a string of setbacks for Marine prosecutors.
The case centers on whether Wuterich -- who had never experienced combat before -- acted within Marine rules of engagement when he shot men near a car and then led his squad on a string of house raids.
Wuterich asserts that he was following combat rules and that he raided the houses because he thought they were the source of gunfire.
Mendoza described the events of Nov. 19, 2005, as being a fast-flowing series of engagements. After a Marine Humvee driver was killed by a roadside bomb, the troops raided several homes.
"When I opened the door, the first thing I see is womens and kids laying down on a bed," Mendoza -- who is originally from Venezuela and speaks with a heavy accent -- recalled seeing in the second house. "I believe they were scared."
Mendoza testified that he shot an unarmed Iraqi man who opened the front door of the home, and that he shot a different man in another house who he thought was reaching for a weapon.
Mendoza said the killings were within combat rules because the occupants of the homes had been declared hostile.
Prosecutors called as a witness Captain Kathryn Navin, a Marine lawyer who testified that she instructed Wuterich's company on rules of engagement in August 2005.
Navin said she taught Marines to have "knowledge to a reasonable certainty that the target you are engaging is a lawful military target," though she conceded there were occasions when positive identification of every individual in a military strike is not needed.
One of Wuterich's military defense attorneys, Lieutenant Colonel Colby Vokey, said the government was no longer charging Wuterich with murdering an Iraqi man who died in the final house cleared by Marines.
The count was withdrawn after the general overseeing the case dismissed charges against another Marine accused of killing three other men in the same room of the house, ruling that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 is one of several Marines who was granted immunity by prosecutors in exchange for testimony. He claimed not to have seen Wuterich kill anyone in the two houses he helped clear with Wuterich.
"I think he's a great Marine, sir," Mendoza said when asked by a defense attorney what he thought of Wuterich.
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