Calif. Marine Charged With Assault

A Camp Pendleton Marine has been charged with assaulting three Iraqi civilians in April by beating or choking them and placing a pistol in one person’s mouth, the military said Wednesday.

Second Lt. Nathan Phan was charged with three counts of assault and one count of making a false official statement relating to the incident April 10 near Hamandiya, west of Baghdad.

“The charges are baseless. Lt. Phan has served the Marine Corps honorably and will continue to do so,” said David Sheldon, his lawyer.

Phan, 26, was the platoon leader of the troops charged with murder in the fatal shooting of an Iraqi man April 26 in the same town, the Corps said. He was not charged in that incident.

Seven Marines and a Navy corpsman were charged in June with premeditated murder in the killing. All could face the death penalty if convicted.

Six other Marines were charged this month in the April 10 incident, including three of those who were charged in the April 26 killing.

The military has not yet decided whether to bring charges against Marines suspected of killing two dozen civilians in the town of Haditha in November.

There have been a number of cases involving alleged misconduct by U.S. troops in Iraq. U.S. military leaders say the vast majority of American troops have conducted themselves honorably.

Prosecutors accuse Phan of putting an unloaded M-9 pistol into the mouth of one of the three male civilians and choking him. They say Phan struck another civilian with closed fists and knees in the face, head and torso and choked a third civilian. The civilians’ ages were not given.

The military said Phan in all three cases used “force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm.”

Sheldon said prosecutors may have based the charges against Phan on statements made by “some of the people implicated” in the April 26 slaying, but he did not say who.

“I think you have to look at the source,” he said.

Phan returned from Iraq to Camp Pendleton in May.

The next step in his case will be an Article 32 hearing, roughly the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding, which will be influential in determining whether Phan will be brought to trial. The military said no date for the hearing had been set.