  | You have information to share ?
Or mistakes to correct ?
click here...
|
|
| |  | | Lawrence Hutchins | | | context : | Iraq  | | judgement place : | United States | | status : | Sentenced | | particulars : | Sentenced to 15 years imprisonment on 6 August 2007 for wilful homicide | | position : | Former Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps |
|
| | | | Lawrence Hutchins was born in 1984 in Plymouth in the State of Massachusetts USA. After high school, he joined the Marine Corps and attained the position of Sergeant. In January 2006, he was sent to Iraq on his first assignment to a war zone.
On 26 April 2006, around 2 a.m., a group of marines made its way to Hamdania, a small village to the west of Baghdad in order to carry out a search. On order of Hutchins, they entered the home of Hashim Awad Al Zobaï, a 52 year old man and father of 11 children. They took hold of him, tied his wrists and forced him to march to a place where a clash had taken place just beforehand between the American armed forces and the Iraqi insurgents. Here, they tied his feet together and forced him to lie in a bomb crater. The marines then pulled back, a few of them firing at him as he lay tied up at the bottom of the crater. Others, at the same time fired into the air with a Kalashnikov which had been taken a short time beforehand, in order to make it seem as if a “genuine” combat was taking place.
After the man had succumbed, the marines scattered the blank cartridges from the Kalashnikov around his dead body and placed the rifle by his side. Before leaving, the marines also untied the bindings on his feet and wrists. Their objective was to make it appear as if Hashim Awad had been caught in the process of planting a home made bomb at the side of the road and that his death was the result of a combat. The following morning the local police found the dead body and interrogated the neighbours for the purpose of identification.
The American military authorities opened proceedings against seven marines and a marine medic for conspiracy, abduction and murder in the Hamdania case. According to the testimony given under oath by six of them, Hutchins was the brain behind this operation as well as the murder of Hashim Awad Al Zobaï. | |     click for more... | | Trial Watch would like to remind its users that any person charged by national or international authorities is presumed innocent until proven guilty. | |  |  | | last time seen : | | | United States | | | period of charges : | | | 26.04.2006 | | | judgement period : | | | 08.2007 - 07.08.2007 | | | charges : | | | Other
War crimes | | | profile last modified : | | | 05.04.2008 |
| |
| | |
|
|
