Soldiers Charged In Connection With Detainee Deaths

A military news release said the charges in the case include murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, communicating a threat, and obstructing justice.

A military news release said the charges in the case include murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, communicating a threat, and obstructing justice.

The release said the unit commander ordered an investigation on the day the alleged murders occurred, and the Army's Criminal Investigative Division is continuing the probe.

The soldiers charged in the case are in pretrial confinement, the release said, while it is determined if enough evidence exists to proceed with courts-martial.

The U.S. military also is investigating whether up to eight Marines from Kilo company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha and engaged in a cover-up after one of their own was killed in a roadside bombing. Three Marines have been relieved of their duties.

None of the Marines has been charged in that incident, alleged to have occurred on November 19.

In another investigation, the exhumed body of an Iraqi man allegedly murdered by U.S. Marines last April was being examined at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, where investigators were looking for evidence about his shooting death in Hamdaniya on April 26.