A US Marine yesterday told a court investigating an alleged massacre in the Iraqi town of Haditha that he watched a superior officer shoot and kill five civilians as they held their hands up in an attempt to surrender.

Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz, testifying after being given immunity from prosecution, admitted lying about events in Haditha in November 2005, and said that he urinated on the head of one of the 24 Iraqi civilians killed by his unit.

The Haditha killings have prompted the biggest US criminal case involving civilian deaths in Iraq. Seven US Marines face charges, including three who have been charged with murder.

Four have been accused of trying to cover up the incident, including Captain Randy Stone, who was sent to Iraq only weeks before the killings. His lawyer claims that Captain Stone did nothing wrong because Marines throughout the command chain knew about the killings but agreed not to order an investigation because the deaths were deemed to have been lawful.

Sergeant Dela Cruz was charged initially with murder but the prosecution dropped the case after he agreed to testify against members of his former unit.

At a pre-trial hearing in Camp Pendleton, California, he said that he watched how his squad leader, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, shot five Iraqis who were trying to surrender and then told his men to lie about the killings.

“He [Seargeant Wuterich] told me that if anybody asked, they were running away and the Iraqi Army shot them,” Sergeant Dela Cruz said.

Times Recommends

• Tehran cannot live up to its rhetoric
• The new unicycle that will ‘change the world’
• We cannot wish away Iran’s bomb