By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) - Recently published photos have, for the first time, exposed the grim realities of the nearly two-decade old killings of 24 Iraqi men, women and children by US Marines.
The US military had long sought to keep the photos from the public, and a trial of eight Marines who were involved in the shootings did not result in any serious consequences.
Military prosecutors had argued after the trial that the release of the photos would harm the family members of the slain, but a years-long effort by the New Yorker Magazine secured their release despite stonewalling by the Pentagon.
Gen. Michael Hagee boasted about the military's efforts to keep the photos under wraps during a 2014 interview for an oral history of the Marine Corps, comparing the scandal that would have ensued to that of Abu Gharib, a military prison in Iraq used by US forces that became synonymous with torture and abuse after photos of multiple prisoners being humiliated and beaten there gained international notoriety.
“The press never got them, unlike Abu Ghraib,” Hagee said during the 2014 interview, according to the New Yorker.
Marine Corps historian Fred Allison responded: "The pictures. They got the pictures. That was what was so bad about Abu Ghraib.”
“Yes,” Hagee said. “And I learned from that.”
“Those pictures today have still not been seen. And so, I’m quite proud of that," he added.
The New Yorker filed what is known as a Freedom of Information Act request with the Navy, under which the Marine Corps operates, in 2020 for the photos and other information, but the service branch "released nothing," the magazine said.
That prompted the news outlet to sue the Navy, Marines and US Central Command for records related to the killings. Anticipating that the military would again seek to argue that the release of the photos would harm the families of the dead, the New Yorker went to Iraq to secure their permission to obtain the records.
A door-to-door campaign in the town of Haditha, facilitated by the assistance of two locals, collected 17 signatures on a form that was filed in court. That led to the military handing over the photos.
They are graphic, startling and, upsetting.
One shows a five-year-old girl, Zainab Younis Salim, dead in bed next to her mother. Another shows 40-year-old mother Ayda Yassin Ahmed surrounded by her dead children in her bedroom.
The dead range in age from three-years-old to 76. The Marines said they were fighting insurgents, but all of the slain were civilians.