Sunday
Nov212004
Sunday, November 21, 2004 at 03:40AM
The bodies of four Iraqis killed in the insurgency in Falluja
last week have been flown to an American military mortuary in Delaware
for autopsies as part of a broadening inquiry into whether marines shot
wounded prisoners, Pentagon officials said Friday. The Naval Criminal
Investigative Service, which is conducting an inquiry into the
videotaped shooting of a wounded Iraqi prisoner last Saturday in a
mosque in Falluja, requested that autopsies be performed at Dover Air
Force Base because it has more sophisticated equipment and forensic
experts than are available in Iraq, two Pentagon officials said. "It
was easier to bring them back here, with all the experts there," one of
the officials said. It was unclear why four bodies were brought back
and whether they were all recovered from the room in the mosque where
the videotaped shooting took place or from different sites. The
decision to bring back the bodies for autopsies was reported Friday in
The Baltimore Sun. The inquiry's main focus is on the shooting by the
marine, whom the Pentagon has not identified. It must determine whether
the marine believed he was acting in self-defense when he yelled that
the Iraqi was only pretending to be dead and fired at the prone body. [more]