Today's* Wired News* has an absolutely dynamite story, about seven Marines and a Navy medic, on trial for kidnapping and killing an Iraqi police officer.
The case is remarkable for the fact that the killers nearly got away with their alleged crime right under the eye of the military's sophisticated surveillance systems. According to testimony, at least three times the warriors took deliberate, and apparently effective, measures to trick the unmanned aerial vehicles -- UAVs in military parlance -- that watch the ground with heat-sensitive imaging by night, and high-resolution video by day...
The killing took place in the early morning darkness of April 26, when a "snatch party" of three Marines and a medic... seized the sleeping [Iraqi officer, Hashim Ibrahim] Awad from his home, while the four remaining squad members waited nearby.
They men allegedly flexicuffed Awad's hands and marched him about a half-mile to a bomb crater, where they bound his feet and positioned him with a stolen shovel and an AK-47. Then they returned to an attack position and shot him.
On the way, according to testimony, the forward party... dug around in the crater. At the same time, the three other troops crouched with Awad behind a low wall in what Brahms described as a squad in a typical military posture.
They held that pose as the surveillance UAV passed over, creating an infrared tableau of four troops watching a bomber dig a hole along the road.
After the UAV passed, and they dodged being seen by a U.S.
helicopter, the four rose from behind the wall to march Awad to the crater, according to the medic's testimony. While they were moving Awad the final 125 yards to his death, according to Bacos, they heard the
UAV return. Cpl. Trent Thomas quickly wrapped himself around Awad so that the two men would appear as a single person on the heat-reactive infrared sensors, according to testimony.Then they put Awad in the hole where the Marine had posed with the shovel seconds before, backed off and signaled. Six of the eight troops opened fire -- staging a firefight with a bomb-planting insurgent.
"Congratulations, we just got away with murder, gents," the squad leader told them, according to Bacos' testimony.
