In 2007, three U.S. Army soldiers in Baghdad captured four Iraqi men they suspected of being insurgents or terrorists. However, they lacked sufficient evidence to convict the men in an Iraqi courtroom—the standard they needed to meet in order to turn the men in to their unit’s detainee holding area. Their leader, First Sgt. John Hatley, believing that releasing the detainees would endanger the lives of his men, ordered the four Iraqis to be killed, then dumped the bodies in a canal.
First Sgt. Hatley and two other U.S. soldiers were later convicted of murder.
While the incident and convictions are old news, recent coverage including video of the soldiers’ confessions have brought the case back to the surface.
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Central to the discussion is the issue of the rules of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly with respect to the standards for holding suspected enemy insurgents and terrorists, with the convicted soldiers and their families suggesting that the Army’s rules forced them into the situation where they felt they had to choose between following the rules and protecting their lives. This exact dilemma was predicted in a discussion here on OmniNerd over three years ago.