0:09

For years while reporting on the Haditha killings, I

0:12

thought what everyone else thought. That

0:14

there were 24 civilians killed by Marines on

0:16

November 19, 2005. 24

0:21

victims. That's what's been

0:23

reported in basically every news story about

0:25

Haditha. It's the number the military gave

0:27

in press conferences. The number that members of

0:29

Congress used

0:46

when they talked about the killings. But as we got deeper

0:48

and deeper into our reporting, we

0:56

began to wonder if maybe that

0:59

number was wrong. This

1:08

is the final episode of season

1:10

three of In the Dark, spaceship

1:13

number eight. One

1:29

day, our producer Samara was reading through the

1:31

thousands of pages of documents that we'd received

1:33

by suing the military. But she came

1:36

across something that got her attention. Samara

1:38

called to tell me about it. Hey, Madeline.

1:40

Hi, Samara. So

1:42

I was calling you because I

1:44

found something that's kind of interesting. Hmm.

1:49

Samara had found a reference to something else

1:51

that happened in Haditha on the

1:53

same day that the 24 people were killed, something

1:56

else the Marines had done that hadn't

1:58

resulted in any charges. and that

2:00

none of us had ever heard of. The

2:03

reference Samara had found came in one

2:05

of the statements Lance Corporal Justin Sherritt

2:07

had given to NCIS agents during the

2:09

Haditha investigation. Most of

2:12

Sherritt's statement was about things we already knew about,

2:15

but there were a few lines about this other

2:17

thing. The exact time that

2:19

this is happening is a little unclear, but

2:21

it's maybe an hour or so after the

2:23

ID has exploded. And so this

2:25

would be after the Marines went into some of

2:28

the houses and killed some people. Yes. Sherritt

2:31

described for investigators how after the Marines

2:33

went into the first two houses, there

2:35

was a pause in the shooting. Sherritt

2:38

and Wouterich were outside looking around. When

2:40

Sherritt said, they spotted a man on

2:42

the road a few hundred meters away,

2:45

and Wouterich just opened fire. Samara

2:48

read to me from Sherritt's statement. Wouterich

2:50

took his first shot but missed. I

2:52

went to fire because Wouterich had fired,

2:54

but my weapon failed to fire and

2:56

jammed. Wouterich took a

2:58

second shot and hit the individual and I saw

3:01

him fall. I did not see a

3:03

weapon and no one had shot at us. Why

3:05

did they shoot him? Why did

3:07

Sherritt say they shot him? Sherritt does

3:09

not give a good explanation. He basically

3:12

says like, Wouterich started shooting, so I

3:14

started shooting. Sherritt

3:16

said he never asked Wouterich why he shot at

3:18

the man. And as far as Samara

3:20

could tell from the records we had, Sherritt

3:23

never mentioned the shooting to investigators again.

3:25

Wouterich never talked to investigators about it at all.

3:29

Samara went back to the documents, looking for

3:31

any other references to this shooting, trying

3:33

to figure out what had happened. And

3:36

as she read, she realized this

3:38

man who was shot apparently survived.

3:41

Samara found documents that described other Marines

3:43

finding him later that day in a

3:45

nearby house. But

3:47

as Samara kept reading, she realized

3:50

that this shooting was only the beginning

3:52

of the story. Because

3:55

it turned out that the man Wouterich and Sherritt

3:57

shot at wasn't alone that day.

4:01

He had been with several other men at the time, and

4:04

it was what happened to one of those men that

4:06

really got her attention. Most

4:10

of the information Samara was finding came

4:12

in a series of interviews NCIS investigators

4:14

had conducted with a different squad of

4:17

Marines, a group of Marines who

4:19

weren't involved in the killings in the houses. This

4:21

group was called Second Squad. Second

4:25

Squad had been posted a little ways away from where

4:27

Sherritt and Wooterich had been, and

4:29

the Marines of Second Squad pick up the

4:31

story from where Sherritt left off. They

4:34

describe hearing the gunfire coming from Wooterich

4:37

and Sherritt's position and spotting

4:39

two men running. Running through

4:41

the area fleeing Wooterich and

4:43

Sherritt. It appeared

4:45

that what had happened was that after Wooterich shot

4:48

the first man, the men who were

4:50

with him started running away, and they

4:52

ran right into the path of Second Squad. Some

4:55

of the Marines of Second Squad spotted these two

4:57

men running. According to their statements

5:00

to NCIS, they thought it looked suspicious. Two

5:03

men running and being shot at by Marines.

5:06

They thought the men were insurgents. And

5:09

so members of Second Squad opened fire

5:11

too, and hit one of the

5:13

men in the head. The

5:15

man who'd been shot in the head fell to the

5:17

ground. As

5:19

the Marines watched, an Iraqi family came outside

5:22

and picked up the man. They

5:24

brought him inside their house. A

5:26

little while later, someone approached the Marines waving

5:29

a white flag, and led the

5:31

Marines to the house. The

5:33

Marines of Second Squad went inside and found the man

5:35

that they had shot in the head. He

5:38

was alive, but badly injured. They

5:41

get inside and they find the Sirockee man,

5:43

the man who's been shot in the head. The

5:46

family of the houses tried to help this guy, like

5:48

they've tied a towel around his head. The

5:50

Marines bandaged the man's head wound. They took photos

5:52

of him. And then they radioed

5:54

for a medevac. And they put him

5:57

on a door that they're using as a stretcher, and they

5:59

bring him. Mamdu

16:00

was 27 years old. He

16:02

was charming, outgoing. His brothers

16:04

described him as a kind of guy

16:06

who got along with everyone. He was

16:08

very friendly, used to have jokes with

16:11

others. He

16:17

mixed with people. He established

16:20

a co-relationship and a friendship

16:22

with others. A

16:24

cousin later sent us a picture of Mamdu. He's

16:27

looking right at the camera, grinning a huge grin.

16:29

A person next to him is giving him bunny ears.

16:39

The family lived in Haditha in a neighborhood

16:41

a little ways away from where Khalid's family

16:43

lived. Before the war, Mamdu

16:45

and his brothers worked in construction. But

16:48

when the Americans arrived, that kind of work dried

16:50

up. And so the brothers started

16:52

doing all kinds of odd jobs, just

16:54

trying to scrape a living together. On

17:01

the morning of November 19, 2005, the brothers had a job to do. A

17:06

guy who ran an operation selling gas around Haditha

17:08

wanted them to walk to a nearby town to

17:10

pick up one of his trucks. Mamdu

17:21

and his brother Juma set off on

17:23

foot with two of their cousins, Hider

17:25

and Yassine. The men

17:28

didn't know that anything out of the ordinary had happened

17:30

that morning. They'd been too far away

17:32

to hear the IED explode, and too

17:34

far away to hear any of the shooting that followed.

17:44

The men walked through the town, out

17:46

of their neighborhood, and into Khalid's Saman

17:48

receives. The streets were quiet,

17:51

and then out of nowhere. There

17:57

were Marines on the street, a few hundred meters away.

18:00

firing at them. What

18:04

Mamdu's brothers were describing appeared

18:06

to be the moment that Lance Corporal Justin

18:08

Sherritt described in his statement to investigators. The

18:11

moment he said Wudirich opened fire on a man and

18:14

so he tried to shoot too. Sherritt

18:17

hadn't given investigators a clear reason why they

18:19

were shooting at the man. And

18:22

the men told Namak they had no idea why the

18:24

Marines were shooting at them. They

18:26

said they weren't carrying weapons or anything

18:28

that could have been mistaken for a weapon. They're

18:31

just walking through town. The

18:33

Marines didn't call out any warning. They

18:36

just started shooting. The

18:38

men ran trying to escape. But

18:41

one of the Marines bullets hit Yassine in the

18:43

stomach and ripped through his back. Yassine

18:45

fell face first to the ground. Mamdu

18:51

stopped running. He checked on Yassine.

18:54

Are you OK? Are you alive? Yassine

18:57

said, go, run. A

19:00

neighbor pulled Yassine into a nearby house. He

19:02

was eventually taken to a hospital and he

19:04

survived. Mamdu,

19:07

Juma, and Heider kept running. Unbeknownst

19:10

to them, they were running right into

19:12

another squad of Marines. Second

19:14

squad. And then. Wahooebras.

19:18

So his brother Mamdu was shot and his head.

19:21

Mamdu was hit too. Neighbors

19:30

got Mamdu into a house. His

19:32

cousin Heider went into the house with him. Heider

19:35

later told his family what happened inside.

19:38

How Mamdu, despite his head wound, was still

19:40

conscious as he lay on the floor of

19:42

the house. How he was

19:44

praying and asking Heider to take care of the

19:47

family. Heider told the

19:49

family how a group of Marines entered the house

19:51

and carried Mamdu out to an

19:53

American helicopter. The

22:00

search came up empty. The

22:02

family kept trying. Juma and

22:05

Qasem traveled with their mother to prisons

22:07

all over Iraq, checking

22:11

to see if Mamdu was being held in any of

22:13

them. But he

22:15

wasn't. Qasem said

22:17

their mother refused to stop hoping that

22:19

Mamdu might still be out there somewhere,

22:22

and that one day they might find him. She

22:28

didn't stop looking for him.

22:30

She knocked all the doors.

22:32

Mr. Khaled, Baghdad, American, Iraqi

22:35

forces, she didn't give up. And

22:41

she wouldn't allow Juma and Qasem to stop

22:43

looking either. Juma

22:49

and Qasem never gave up hope they might

22:51

one day find Mamdu. But

22:54

after their mother died, they did stop

22:56

searching. They

22:59

told Namak that they wanted to end this

23:01

anguish of not knowing. If

23:04

Mamdu was dead, they wanted to know. Maybe

23:06

even find his body and bring it home for

23:08

a proper burial. And

23:11

of course, if their brother was still out there

23:13

somewhere alive, they wanted to find him. But

23:16

it had been so long, almost 20 years. They

23:19

tried everything, looked everywhere, talked to

23:22

everyone. But

23:24

they'd never been able to find Mamdu. And

23:28

so, we decided to

23:31

try. The

23:43

last time anyone in the family had seen Mamdu,

23:45

he was being put onto a

23:47

U.S. military helicopter after being shot

23:49

by Marines in the head. But

23:51

he was still alive at that point, even still

23:54

talking, according to his family. We

23:56

actually managed to find a Marine who was on that

23:58

Black Hawk helicopter that day. day. His

24:01

name is Pedro Garcia. He'd been

24:03

wounded that day in a different engagement in another part

24:05

of town. Garcia remembers being

24:07

told by someone that the Iraqi man being

24:09

loaded onto the Black Hawk with him was

24:12

responsible for the IED that killed

24:14

Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. I

24:17

look over and I'm like, who the hell

24:19

is this? And

24:21

then one of the guys from First platoon

24:23

were like, excuse my

24:25

language, but they were like, that's a piece

24:27

of shit that fucking pulled the trigger on

24:30

the IED. And I'm

24:32

like, why? Why is

24:34

he here? Why? Why?

24:36

And I remember saying,

24:39

fuck you, piece of shit. Mamdu

24:42

of course was not the trigger man, but

24:45

Garcia didn't know that. On

24:47

board the chopper, Mamdu was hooked up to

24:49

oxygen. He didn't look good. Someone

24:53

asked Garcia if he would squeeze the

24:55

oxygen bag to help Mamdu breathe. And

24:58

I remember it was a crew chief. He

25:00

told me he goes, hey, I need you

25:03

to blow the little mass

25:05

thing with those little ball to squeeze

25:07

and it pumps air, pump

25:10

air into him to keep the circulation. He

25:12

wanted me to do that to him, to the

25:14

Iraqi guy. And

25:17

I literally told him, it

25:20

might have been cold, but when they

25:22

told me who that person was and then

25:26

knowing that one of my

25:28

buddies is killed, I told

25:31

him, excuse my language, but go

25:34

fuck yourself. Fuck and let them die. And

25:41

Mamdu was still alive when the Blackhawk landed

25:43

near the hospital at Al-Assad Air

25:45

Base. Samara

25:51

found records of interviews that NCIS investigators

25:53

did with medical personnel who worked

25:56

at the hospital on the base. And they

25:58

tell what happened after Mamdu arrived. arrived. He's

26:01

flown to the hospital at the American base

26:03

at Al-Assad. And when he

26:05

arrives at Al-Assad, he's in pretty bad

26:07

shape, but he is still alive. And

26:10

Al-Assad doesn't have a name for him, and they have

26:12

no identifying information at all.

26:15

So the front desk clerk enters him into

26:18

the patient log as enemy

26:20

prisoner of war patient number eight.

26:24

At the hospital at Al-Assad, medical

26:26

staff intubated Mamdu, who

26:28

they called patient number eight. Then

26:31

they loaded him onto another helicopter, bound

26:33

for a hospital in Baghdad, run by

26:36

the American military. We

26:38

have a statement that a Marine who was on

26:40

that flight to Baghdad gave to investigators. This

26:43

Marine's job was to guard Mamdu on the

26:45

helicopter ride. He was accompanied by

26:47

a nurse. The Marine

26:49

told investigators that the chopper landed in

26:51

Baghdad on a helipad near the hospital.

26:54

The Marine then loaded Mamdu into a

26:56

six-wheel ATV and drove to the hospital.

26:59

They went inside. It was full of

27:01

military personnel. A second

27:03

lieutenant told the Marine he'd have to fill

27:05

out some paperwork about the patient he was

27:07

guarding. The Marine asked if he

27:10

could use the bathroom first. When

27:12

he returned, the second lieutenant told him, don't

27:15

worry about the paperwork. The

27:17

man you brought us is dead. It

27:26

isn't clear exactly what happened in Mamdu's

27:28

final moments, or exactly when he

27:30

died. It seems it could

27:32

have happened on the second helicopter ride, the one

27:35

to Baghdad. We

27:37

requested Mamdu's full medical records from the

27:39

U.S. military, but they refused to provide

27:41

them. We do know

27:44

that despite his head injury, Mamdu was

27:46

considered stable when he left Al-Assad, headed

27:48

to Baghdad. The

27:50

limited records we did manage to obtain say

27:53

that he died, quote, as a

27:55

result of a penetrating injury to the brain.