BAGHDAD, Iraq – The fatal shooting of a wounded and apparently unarmed man in a Fallujah mosque by a U.S. Marine may have been an act of self-defense, international legal experts said, because of a danger that a wounded combatant might try to blow up a hidden weapon.
A key issue was whether the injured man was a prisoner at the time.
The shooting happened Saturday, one day after the Marine, who has not been identified, was wounded in the face and after another man in his unit was killed by the booby-trapped body of an insurgent.
The Marine involved in the fatal shooting has been withdrawn from the battlefield pending the results of the investigation, the U.S. military said.
Florian Westphal, a spokesman for the International Committee for the Red Cross, said he couldn’t say for sure whether the men were prisoners or not.
“The fact that was reported was that he was wounded. But whether he was already a prisoner or not was not clear to me,” Westphal said.
But, he said, the Geneva Conventions are clear: protection of wounded combatants once they are out of action is a basic rule.
The shooting became public Monday with the airing of the footage taken Saturday by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC News. In his report, Sites said the man who was killed didn’t appear to be armed or threatening in any way, with no weapons visible in the mosque.
On the video, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.
The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward an Iraqi lying on the floor of the mosque. The video shown by NBC was blacked out at that point and did not show the bullet hitting the man. But a rifle shot could be heard.
“He’s dead now,” a Marine is heard saying.
It is unclear from the footage whether the body was moving before the shot. The only movement that can be seen is the body flinching at the impact of the bullets.
Charles Heyman, a British infantry veteran and senior defense analyst with Jane’s Consultancy Group in London, defended the Marine, saying soldiers are taught that the enemy “is at his most dangerous when he is severely injured.”
Heyman said there is a danger that a wounded enemy may try to detonate a hidden firearm or a grenade, and if the man made the slightest move “in my estimation they would be justified in shooting him.”
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