Marine in charge of camp where Iraqi died says guards commonly hit inmates

By Robert Jablon

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. A Marine in charge of a camp where an Iraqi prisoner died from a crushed windpipe testified Wednesday that guards commonly punched or kicked inmates as part of a sleep-deprivation tactic to soften them up for military interrogators.

But Staff Sgt. Fredy Tellocastillo, the noncommissioned officer in charge of Camp Whitehorse in Iraq, said he never saw unnecessary force used on the man.

Tellocastillo testified under immunity in the trial of Sgt. Gary Pittman, who is accused of karate-kicking Iraqi prisoner Nagem Hatab in June 2003. Pittman could get two years in a military prison if found guilty of assault and dereliction of duty.

The case is the first court-martial known to be connected to the death of a prisoner in Iraq.

Hatab, 52, had been rumored to be an official of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and part of the ambush of a U.S. Army convoy that left 11 soldiers dead and led to the capture of Pfc. Jessica Lynch and five others.

Two days after Hatab arrived at the camp, a guard found the lifeless inmate lying naked and covered in his own waste in a yard at Camp Whitehorse, which has since been closed.

According to a fellow Marine, Pittman had kicked the handcuffed and hooded Hatab in the chest so hard that he flew 3 feet before hitting the floor. An autopsy concluded that Hatab had seven broken ribs and slowly suffocated from a crushed windpipe.

The defense says Pittman, 40, was too sick at the time Hatab was injured to have harmed him and that another Marine may have caused the injuries. Pittman is one of two men charged in Hatab’s death.

Hatab is among 37 Iraqi and Afghan prisoners whose deaths are under investigation. (AP)

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/238/nation/Marine_in_charge_of_camp_where:.shtml