Marine Says U.S. Troops Routinely Committed Atrocities

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Marine Says U.S. Troops Routinely Committed Atrocities

TORONTO -- An American seeking to become the first U.S. soldier granted refugee status in Canada after refusing to serve in Iraq told immigration officials Tuesday that the Army was drilling its soldiers to think of all Arabs and Muslims as potential terrorists.

"We were being told that it was a new kind of war, that these were evil people and they had to be dealt with," said Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman, 26, who fled from Fort Bragg, N.C., on Jan. 2.

"We were told that we would be going to Iraq to jack up some terrorists," Hinzman told the Immigration and Refugee Board on the second of his three-day hearing for political asylum.

He now lives in Toronto with his 31-year-old wife, Nga Nguyen, and 2-year-old son Liam. A Fort Bragg spokeswoman said Hinzman was removed from the rolls of the 82nd Airborne Division.

He said U.S. military training since Sept. 11 is designed to "foster an attitude of hatred. It gets your blood boiling to carry out the mission."

Hinzman is arguing that the war in Iraq is illegal and fighting in it would have made him a war criminal. He also said he would face persecution if forced to return to the United States because he likely would be court-marshaled and sentenced to an Army jail.

Immigration and Refugee Board officials noted that others who had deserted from the military typically spent only one year in jail.

"Serving one day in prison for refusing to comply with an illegal order is one day too long," Hinzman told the tribunal, which likely will take several weeks to reach its decision.

Hinzman said he enlisted for four years in 2000 to experience the army, believing it would give him guidance and maturity. But he fled the 82nd Airborne Division about two weeks after learning his outfit would be sent to Iraq.

Hinzman had served three years in the Army and applied for conscientious objector status before his unit was sent to Afghanistan in 2002, but the Army told him it lost his application. He said he wanted to fulfill his service obligation but not to participate in combat.

"The military is to fight justified wars," said his lawyer Jeffrey House, an American who first came to Canada as a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. "I don't think he joined the military to invade other countries who had done nothing to the United States, just at the pleasure of the United States president."

Hinzman is among several young American soldiers seeking refugee status in Canada, hoping to capitalize on the country's opposition to U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign policy.

Canada has declined Bush's request for troops in Iraq and the majority of its people are opposed to the war.

Some 30,000 to 50,000 Americans fled to Canada during the Vietnam War and were allowed to settle there and many on both sides of the 49th parallel are making grim comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq.

Jimmy Massey, a staff sergeant who served in Iraq before being honorably discharged after 12 years in the Marines, was called by House to testify that American soldiers were routinely committing atrocities against innocent Iraqis.

"The code of silence you take in the Marines is much like the one in organized crime," he said, noting it was not uncommon for Marines to fire on wounded Iraqi combatants, a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

"I have witnessed Marines putting rounds into enemy combatants who are expiring," Massey told the tribunal.

Massey, whose unit was stationed at a checkpoint in the southern Baghdad district of Rashid, said his men killed more than 30 civilians people in a 48-hour period, including unarmed demonstrators.

"We were shooting up people as they got out of their cars trying to put their hands up," said Massey, who was with the 7th Marine weapons company.

He said there was confusion over hand signals and communications with Iraqis and that when the Marines fired warning shots, Iraqis could have misconstrued the gunfire as signals of celebration.

"I don't know if the Iraqis thought we were celebrating their new democracy," he said. "I do know that we killed innocent civilians."