2 American Officials Apologize for Crime

By EDWARD WONG
Published: July 7, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?th&emc=th

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 6 — The United States ambassador and the top American military commander here together issued an unusual apology on Thursday for the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman and the killing of her family, saying that the crime, in which at least four soldiers are suspects, had injured the "Iraqi people as a whole."

The statement came just hours after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said at a news conference that he might ask the American military to scrap a rule granting foreign soldiers here immunity from Iraqi prosecution. Such a move would be a direct rebuke to the Bush administration, which has fought tenaciously to ensure that American soldiers are exempt from local or international laws when serving on foreign soil.

"I'm about to talk to the multinational forces to reach solutions that will put an end to such practices," Mr. Maliki said of criminal behavior by soldiers. One possible course of action, he said, would be to "revise the issue of immunity."

"Our people cannot tolerate that every day there is an ugly crime such as that in Mahmudiya," he added, referring to the market town near which the four Iraqis, including a young girl, were killed on March 12.

Mr. Maliki's assertion, which followed similar remarks he made in Kuwait on Wednesday, signaled the growing furor within the Iraqi government over the latest crime. The incident first became public last week, when the Fourth Infantry Division announced that it was investigating the involvement of American soldiers in the rape and slayings.

The rise in political tensions came as sectarian violence continued in Iraq. A suicide car bomber rammed his sedan into a Shiite shrine in the holy town of Kufa, killing at least 12 people, including five Iranians, and injuring dozens, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi and American forces have generally maintained tight security around the southern holy sites of Najaf and Kufa, to which Shiite pilgrims, including many Iranians, flock by the thousands.

The strongly worded apology issued Thursday night by the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad revealed the deep concern among American officials over the criminal episode's potential to damage the entire American project in Iraq.

"We understand this is painful, confusing and disturbing, not only to the family who lost a loved one, but to the Iraqi people as a whole," the two senior officials said in a written statement. "The loss of a family member can never be undone. The alleged events of that day are absolutely inexcusable and unacceptable behavior."

The statement is all the more unusual because no soldiers have been convicted yet or even formally charged. On Monday, a recently discharged Army private, Steven D. Green, 21, was arrested in North Carolina on suspicion of rape and murder. Three soldiers, some of whom are reported to have admitted their roles in the crime to investigators, are confined to base in Mahmudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, and their weapons have been confiscated.

Mr. Green was moved Thursday to Louisville, Ky., where, in a half-hour hearing in which he pleaded not guilty, a federal judge ordered continued detention for him. Prosecutors said that Mr. Green, who was discharged from the Army in May before his suspected role in the case was discovered, is scheduled to be arraigned on Aug. 8 in Paducah, Ky.

The mayor of Mahmudiya, Mouayid Fadhil, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that American military investigators wanted to dig up the victims' bodies. But Iraq's Justice Ministry must first determine whether exhumation is allowed under Koranic law, he said. The victims' relatives are also reluctant to divulge the burial site out of shame over the fact that one of the dead, a girl as young as 15, was reported to have been raped by at least two American soldiers, the mayor said.

Sexual assault is considered one of the most heinous and shameful crimes in Muslim society; even mentioning the subject is often considered taboo. "We don't want to talk about this," Mr. Fadhil said. "She was raped."

The debate over exhuming the bodies could complicate the military investigation. American military officials declined on Thursday to talk about specifics of the investigation, but prosecutors undoubtedly want detailed forensic evidence to build as strong a case as possible against the suspects. The victims were examined by doctors at the local hospital months ago before being buried, Mr. Fadhil said, but the Americans want to check the corpses for themselves.

The victim in the suspected rape was Abeer Qassim Hamzeh. The others killed were her younger sister, father and mother, Mr. Fadhil said.

The case is one of at least five in which the military is investigating or prosecuting soldiers in the killings of unarmed Iraqi civilians. Four were announced in June alone. The Mahmudiya case is the only one that involves the rape of an Iraqi, making it especially incendiary.

In another case, in which marines are suspected of killing 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November, the second-ranking American officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, has completed his review of an inquiry into whether Marine officers tried to cover up the shootings and is expected to announce his findings and recommendations in the next few days, said two military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings have not been made public.

Mr. Maliki said at the news conference on Thursday that the Iraqi government would conduct its own inquiry into the Mahmudiya crime.

But Iraqi courts have no power to prosecute the soldiers. An order issued under the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which ruled Iraq after the American invasion until June 2004, said that foreign troops, missions and their consultants here are immune from Iraqi law. Orders issued by an occupational authority usually expire when the authority leaves, but the Iraqi Constitution has extended the decrees.

Mr. Fadhil said that a committee of local officials was prepared to carry out its own criminal investigation but was awaiting orders from the national government. "Now, the subject has many dimensions," he said. "It's become an international affair."

Complicating matters, "the family doesn't want to say where the bodies are," he added. "The family didn't involve the police when the crime took place. We found out about it only when the Americans revealed it."

The American military began its investigation after a soldier described the crime in a counseling session in late June and said he had been involved. American soldiers were notified by Iraqis of the crime on March 12, the day it took place, military officials said. But the Iraqis who had stumbled on the bodies had speculated that other Iraqis had done the killing, since the area is a caldron of sectarian violence. So the Americans did not think of investigating then, officials said.

A senior American commander in Mahmudiya visited Mr. Fadhil and other local officials on Thursday and "expressed sorrow for the killing of the family and the behavior of the soldiers," Mr. Fadhil said.

He added that the local investigative committee intended to examine the victims' home. The American soldiers are accused of trying to cover up the crime by burning both the body of Ms. Hamzeh and the house. But the body was sufficiently intact for local doctors to find multiple bullet wounds, Mr. Fadhil said.

The violence in Iraq on Thursday threatened to ignite further sectarian bloodletting. The suicide car bomb in Kufa had been following two buses carrying Iranian pilgrims and was detonated when the pilgrims disembarked, said Capt. Salem Ghanem, the assistant director of tourist security in Najaf, which adjoins Kufa. Iraqi vendors who had gathered around the pilgrims were among the victims.

The explosion ripped into the two buses and left behind pools of blood, shredded shoes and bags with food that the pilgrims had been carrying.

Officials in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Kufa are hoping that religious tourism will help strengthen the local economy.

In Baghdad, two car bombs exploded near a high school, killing at least three people and injuring six. Gunmen in the town of Musayyib shot up a minivan, killing two girls who were just 4 and 6 years-old. Police found two bodies in the insurgent stronghold of Hawija; both the victims had been handcuffed and tortured.

In his afternoon news conference, Mr. Maliki said that the government has decided to ban all political activity on university campuses because of rampant violence.

He also said that a police force with thousands of members assigned to protect government buildings and other installations was filled with criminals and murderers. The declaration was an unusually blunt acknowledgment of the corruption that has plagued the Iraqi security forces. "It didn't really protect the ministries," he said of the force, called the Facilities Protection Service. "On the contrary, it turned into a partner in the killing."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Mona Mahmoud in Baghdad, Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Najaf and Kirkuk, and David S. Cloud and Eric Schmitt from Washington.