A Marine reservist went on trial Monday on charges he delivered a karate kick to the chest of an Iraqi prisoner who, a military coroner ruled, suffocated from a crushed windpipe. The assault case against Sgt. Gary Pittman is the first court-martial connected to the death of a prisoner in Iraq. The prisoner of war, Nagem Sadoon Hatab, 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. Within 48 hours of the Iraqi's June 2003 arrest, a guard found a lifeless Hatab lying naked and covered in his own waste in a yard at the Camp Whitehorse prison, a makeshift lockup outside Nasiriyah that has since been closed.
According to a fellow Marine who has been granted immunity, Pittman karate-kicked the handcuffed, hooded Hatab in the chest so hard that he flew three feet before hitting the floor. An autopsy concluded that Hatab, 52, had seven broken or cracked ribs and slowly suffocated from a crushed windpipe. Defense lawyers say Hatab died of natural causes, perhaps from an asthma attack.
| Gonna be hard to argue against the autopsy. A fractured trachea is hard to miss. |
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