Additional Marines from the same battalion faced lesser charges of assault related to the use of physical force during interrogations of suspected insurgents.
"[2][3] According to testimony received under various plea agreements,[4] it was alleged that the Marines abducted an Iraqi man, killed him a half-hour later, placed an AK-47 and a shovel next to his body along the road, then falsified the formal report of the incident, asserting he was shot while digging a hole for a roadside bomb.
In an interview on ABC television, Congressman John P. Murtha explained "some Marines pulled somebody out of a house, put them next to an IED, fired some AK-47 rounds so they'd have cartridges there.
The Marines then bound the man's hands using plastic restraints and forced him to walk a distance back to the ambush site.
Once they arrived at the ambush site, the Marines bound (the autopsy was inconclusive and could not verify this) the man's feet and placed him into a hole from an old IED blast.
Press reports noted it was unusual for Marines to be placed in the brig before charges were filed, suggesting concern by authorities the men were considered a flight risk.
Shortly after the incident came to light, the House and Senate armed services committees intended to hold hearings into the Hamdania events as well as the Haditha massacre.
In the course of the military investigation, additional assault charges were made against Hutchins, Shumate, and Thomas, as well as against three other Marines from the same battalion who were not involved in the alleged murder, all of which were dropped later.
An attorney familiar with the military investigation expects the charges will relate to the use of physical violence to extract information from suspected insurgents in the Hamdania area.
[11] Subsequent reports reveal that these assault charges, which were all dropped, were related to activities occurring half a month earlier on April 10, 2006, also in Hamdania, in which three civilians were brutalized by US Marine personnel.
[13] Defense attorneys are expected to object that testimony allegedly obtained under coercion as unreliable, and also to argue that Iraqi accounts of the incident are also suspect.
In spite of defense statements that their clients' Article 32 hearings showed weaknesses in the prosecution's case, on September 25, 2006, Mattis recommended that Jodka, Shumate, and Magincalda face a general court martial for murder.
[14] On October 7, 2006, military prosecutors reached an agreement with Petty Officer 3rd Class Melson J. Bacos in which charges against the corpsman would be reduced to kidnapping and conspiracy in return for his testimony.
In November 2006, Lance Corporal Jerry Shumate was jailed for 21 months after he pleaded guilty to the aggravated assault of an Iraqi man who was killed in the town of Hamdania in April.
During his testimony at Camp Pendleton in California, Shumate said that the squad had been looking for Iraqis planting IED's when the men agreed a plan to kill a known insurgent.
Other US marines based at Camp Pendleton are under investigation over a separate incident in November 2005 in which 24 civilians were killed in the Iraqi town of Haditha.
In return for his cooperative testimony against the remaining three defendants, prosecutors dropped additional charges of murder, larceny, and housebreaking.
[20] In 2015, following a statement made by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, a new trial was ordered by Lieutenant General Robert Neller.
[21] On June 17, 2015, Hutchins was convicted by a military jury for a second time, being found guilty of the murder of Hashim Ibrahim Awad and also conspiracy and larceny, while being acquitted on a charge of falsifying an official statement.
[23] Some accounts, including the original U.S. government press release,[citation needed] incorrectly gave the name of the village as Hamandiyah or Hamadiya instead of the correct Hamdania (pronounced hahm-da-NEE-yah).