Thursday, June 22, 2006
The latest developments in Iraq:
Seven Marines and a Navy corpsman were charged Wednesday with premeditated murder in the shooting death of an Iraqi man who was pulled from his home and shot while U.S. troops hunted for insurgents. They could face the death penalty if convicted. All eight also were charged with kidnapping. Other charges include conspiracy, larceny and providing false official statements.
Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants went on a hunger strike Wednesday to protest the shooting death of an attorney on the ousted Iraqi leader's defense team, their chief lawyer said -- the third such killing in the 8-month-old trial. Lawyer Khamis al-Obeidi, a Sunni Arab who represented Saddam and his half brother Barzan Ibrahim, was abducted from his home Wednesday morning. His body was found riddled with bullets on a street near the Shiite slum of Sadr City.
Gunmen kidnapped roughly 85 workers north of Baghdad, forcing them into a bus and a minivan, and later released about 30 women and children. Kamel Mohammed, a plant engineer, said he saw gunmen in three sedans intercept two of the factory's buses and a minivan. The buses are used to ferry workers from the plant to the Shiite areas of Baghdad.
An al-Qaida-led insurgent group said it decided to kill four kidnapped Russian Embassy workers after a deadline for meeting its demands passed on Wednesday, prompting one hostage's sister to make an impassioned plea for the men to be freed. The Internet statement purportedly from the Mujahedeen Shura Council did not say whether the decision had been carried out.
The Pentagon waited nine months after completing an investigation into the deaths of two U.S. soldiers before notifying relatives the men were killed by Iraqi troops, the military acknowledged Wednesday. The June 2004 deaths of Army Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr., 34, of Tracy, Calif., and 2nd Lt. Andre D. Tyson, 33, of Riverside, Calif., were originally attributed to an ambush during a patrol near Balad, Iraq. The Army said this week a military investigation found the two had been shot by Iraqi civil defense officers. No possible motive has been divulged.
Source: Associated Press