An eight-man panel of four officers and four senior non-commissioned officers will begin listening to testimony Monday morning when the lawyers fighting the final Battle of Haditha offer their opening statements at the General Court Martial of SSgt Frank D. Wuterich, the last Marine standing in the six-year-old fight.
The government is apparently expecting a tough battle in the weeks ahead.
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The ambush was the beginning of a day long fight at Haditha that left one Marine dead, eleven wounded, and an unknown number of hostiles dead in smoking bomb craters and shredded underbrush covering the battlefield.
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At the end of the day Marines, had captured or detained enough suspects who later talked that 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines was able to break the back of the active insurgency in Haditha, Chessani explained.
As reported yesterday, the career infantry officer has been stricken from the witness list for Wuterichs court martial.
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For more than five years the 31-year old Marine has waited for his day in court. He was indicted December 19, 2006 upon the conclusion of a world-wide, multi-million dollar criminal investigation of the alleged November 19, 2005 massacre that never happened.
Although eight Marines were initially charged with complaints ranging from murder to cover-up and dereliction of duty, all but Wuterich have been exonerated. During the contentious proceeding in 2006 and 2007 all of them were cleared because of a lack of evidence, a paucity of forensic clues, and the almost certain participation of Al Qaeda financed terrorists who precipitated the incident by attacking the Marines from ambush.
