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Episode 8: On Trial - In The Dark | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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Episode 8: On Trial

In The Dark

Tue Sep 10 2024

Summary

In The Dark: Episode 8 - On Trial

Release Date: September 10, 2024

Introduction

"In The Dark," hosted by Madeleine Baran and produced by The New Yorker, delves deep into the intricate case of Frank Wudrich, a U.S. Marine accused of committing war crimes in Haditha, Iraq. This episode not only chronicles the trial but also explores the broader implications of military justice and accountability.

Frank Wudrich's Case

The episode begins by outlining the severe charges against four Marines, including Frank Wudrich, related to the deaths of Iraqi civilians on November 19, 2005 (00:35). Wudrich faced murder and dereliction of duty charges for ordering his squad to "shoot first, ask questions later" (05:37). Despite the gravity of the accusations, the prosecution's case unraveled over time, leading to the dismissal of multiple charges against his fellow Marines, leaving Wudrich as the sole defendant (03:02).

Defense Strategy and Attorney Haytham Faraj

Haytham Faraj, Wudrich's defense attorney, shares his struggles in connecting with his client. Faraj employs a psychodramatic reenactment technique to elicit Wudrich's memories of the incident (08:19). Despite these efforts, Wudrich remains uncooperative, claiming no recollection of specific actions during the killings (07:08). Faraj expresses skepticism about Wudrich's memory loss, suggesting it may be a tactic to protect his squad (07:17).

The Military Trial

The trial commenced on January 9, 2012, at Camp Pendleton, California. Major Nicholas Gannon, the Marine prosecutor, presented the case without naming the victims, referring to them by numbers instead (19:57). This strategic move was likely aimed at influencing the all-military jury, composed of Marines who had served in Iraq (21:20). Faraj's opening statement sought to humanize Wudrich and cast doubt on the prosecution's evidence, emphasizing the "fog of war" and questioning the credibility of fellow Marines' testimonies (22:52).

Plea Deal and Its Aftermath

Amidst uncertainties about the jury's leanings, a plea deal was proposed, allowing Wudrich to plead guilty to a minor charge of negligent dereliction of duty in exchange for dropping more serious charges (31:53). Lieutenant General Thomas Waldhauser ultimately approved the deal, leading to Wudrich's discharge without imprisonment (35:05). Faraj reflects on the limited accountability, stating, "The government decided not to hold anybody accountable" (37:00).

Impact on Victims' Families

The episode poignantly highlights the suffering of the victims' families, particularly Ehab, who lost her husband and brothers, and struggles to raise her sons Bakr and Omar without nurturing hatred (44:47). Ehab's decision to remove photos of the deceased to prevent her sons from harboring anger underscores the lasting trauma inflicted by the lack of justice (45:01).

Broader Investigation into Military War Crimes

Baran and her team investigate military records, uncovering 781 possible war crimes investigated by the U.S. military since 2001 (55:26). The analysis reveals a systemic failure to prosecute, with over 65% of allegations dismissed and fewer than 20% resulting in any form of punishment, often minimal (56:01). This lack of accountability raises critical questions about the military justice system's effectiveness in addressing serious violations (58:48).

Conclusion

Episode 8 of "In The Dark" underscores a troubling pattern of impunity within the U.S. military justice system. The Frank Wudrich case exemplifies how severe war crimes can go unpunished, leaving victims' families without closure and highlighting the need for systemic reform. The episode serves as a compelling examination of justice, accountability, and the human cost of war.

Notable Quotes

Haytham Faraj (07:23): "I found it to be unbelievable that you don't remember where you were, what you did, and who did what."
Frank Wouterich (37:22): "I wish there was something I could do that could change the perception of me."
Haytham Faraj (58:48): "You have to question a little bit whether justice is a priority here or if something else is a big priority than justice."

Further Resources

For a comprehensive view of the military justice system and detailed records of war crimes investigations, visit newyorker.com/season3.

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Transcript

Madeline Barron (0:00)

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Previously on in the Dark. Based on the findings of the investigations.

Haytham Faraj (0:32)

Various charges have been preferred against four.

Kurt Kumagai (0:35)

Marines relating to the deaths of the.

Madeline Barron (0:37)

Iraqi civilians on 19 November 2005. These charges include murder, dereliction of duty. We've read some of your statements to investigators and it sounds like you really regret the way things turned out that day. Who wouldn't?

Haytham Faraj (0:52)

We got the letter and looked at.

Kurt Kumagai (0:54)

Each other and said.

Haytham Faraj (0:56)

I said, holy shit, this is amazing.

Madeline Barron (1:02)

What was Wudrich like?

Kurt Kumagai (1:04)

Like, he was quiet, but a good dude.

Madeline Barron (1:12)

So the first one that they saw was Frank and he can remember that there was blood on Frank's uniform. The charges against the first Marine for what happened that day in Haditha had been dropped. Justin Sharritt was a free man. But there were three other Marines who also faced charges of murder. There was the squad leader, Frank Wuderich, charged with the murder of the men by the white car and the murder of women and children inside the houses. There was Sonic Dela Cruz, also charged with murdering the men by the white car. And there was Steven Tatum, who according to NCIS records, had confessed to shooting women and children, knowing that they were women and children. Tatum was initially charged with two counts of murder for killing five year old Zaynib and her sister, 15 year old Noor in the back bedroom of Safa's house. And four counts of negligent homicide for killings in the house nearby, including the killing of the mother Asma and her four year old son Abdullah, who were found dead kneeling together in the corner of their living room. A whole series of charges against these Marines. The possibility of decades, maybe even entire lifetimes in prison. But then something surprising happened. One by one the cases against the Marines started to be dropped. The charges against Sonic Delacruz for the killings by the white car, dropped. The charges against Steven Tatum for killing two men, a woman and three children. Dropped. These Marines would face no punishment for the killings, just like Sherritt Dela Cruz and Tatum would walk free. What appears to have happened was that military prosecutors wanted to turn these defendants, these men accused of mur, into witnesses. They wanted them to testify against their squad leader, Frank Wouterich. And so it would be Wouterich and Wuderich alone who would stand trial for what happened that day in Haditha. This is season three of in the Dark, an investigative podcast from the New Yorker. This season is about the killing of 24 men, women and children by US Marines in Haditha, Iraq. It's a story not just about the killings themselves, but also about the failure of the US Military to bring the men responsible for them to justice. Episode eight On Trial.

Madeline Barron (12:54)

And he thought it was clear that Wouteritch was guilty of some things, like being a terrible leader and violating the rules of engagement. But Farage questioned whether Wouterich was as responsible for the actual shootings as the government was claiming. Farage thought that other Marines were more to blame and that some of those Marines had lied about Wudrich's involvement as a way to get out of getting punished for their own crimes. Meanwhile, the prosecutors were also preparing for trial. They had all the evidence from the Iraqi eyewitnesses, from Safa and Abdul Rahman and his sister Iman and the others in order to use their accounts at trial. The prosecution would either need to have these witnesses come to the US and testify in person, or the prosecutors would have to travel to Iraq to take their depositions, their sworn testimony, on video, with the defense there to cross examine. And then the prosecutors could play those video Depositions for the jurors. The remaining family members of the children who survived the killings were reluctant to let them travel to the US So the prosecutors settled on depositions instead and went to Iraq to take them in 2008, a little over two years after the killings. The transcripts of these depositions are among the most painful I've read. Safa was 14 when she gave her testimony. Abdulrahman was just 9 and his sister Iman was 11. Here's how the prosecutor opened the questioning of 9 year old Abdul Rahman. Do you live with your mom and dad? No, Abdulrahman replied. And why not? The prosecutor asked. They're dead, he said. All three children were asked to go through the killings step by step in detail. The prosecutor had Iman mark on a diagram where her mother, brother and other family members were in the living room when they were killed. The prosecutor also showed Iman and Safa photos of their dead parents and other family members, presumably the same photos we'd received. He introduced the photos to Safa by saying, I need to show you some photos. Okay? And the photos are gruesome. Okay? They are. What's another word for gruesome? Another attorney jumped in. Unpleasant, the prosecutor agreed. Unpleasant. Bad. Then the display of photos began. One by one, Safa was shown the photos of her dead family members. Safa, do you recognize the contents of that photo? The prosecutor asked. Yes, safa said. Can you tell us what that photo shows? That's my mom, she said. All of this was excruciating, but it was for a greater purpose, making sure that these valuable eyewitness testimonies could be heard by a jury to get justice. The surviving family members were counting on the American prosecutors to deliver a conviction. One man, Hamid Hassan, whose son was shot to death next to the white car, gave a statement to the US Government before the trial. He said, I would like to thank the court back in the United States for being conscientious to try these Marines and that you have charged them with these murders. I would like to thank them from here from the bottom of my heart and I appreciate everything you are doing in pursuing this case further. After the break, the surviving family members get their last chance for justice as the case against Frank Wouterich goes to trial. Hey, it's Madeline. If you're a fan of in the Dark and you love long form storytelling and you've listened to all the serialized investigative podcasts and you've already watched everything good on Netflix, there is a wealth of stories you're going to love waiting for you at the New Yorker like this story published just this year by Patrick Radden Keefe, about a teen who got mixed up in the London underworld and then mysteriously fell into the Thames. In the four years since Zach's death, the family has had to confront the extent to which the boy they thought they knew had been living a double existence. None of the Brettlers had ever imagined that Zach might be moving about London, pretending to be someone else. Al this season of in the Dark took us four years to report. You're hearing it now because the New Yorker believes in what we do. So go to newyorker.com/ and become a subscriber today. That's newyorker.com/dark. It took a long time for the case against Frank Wouterich to get to trial. It was more than six years after the killings, and by that time many people in the US had moved on from really thinking about Iraq. The war was over. Obama was president. The Haditha case was no longer big news. The charges against Witterich had been reduced over the years from the original charges of murder to manslaughter, manslaughter for killing one or more of the men by the white car and for killing the people inside the back bedroom of Safa's house. The charge for killing the brother Marwan in the final house had been dropped. Wouterich also faced other charges, including assault for his actions inside Safa's house and the house nearby, and dereliction of duty for giving the order to shoot first, ask questions later. The trial finally began on January 9, 2012, in an old converted barracks at Camp Pendleton in California. Wooderich came dressed in uniform, green pants with a khaki shirt adorned with bars of ribbons commemorating his various military achievements. A Marine prosecutor, Major Nicholas Gannon, stood up to give the government's opening statement. There's a thing that typically happens in an opening statement by a prosecutor. It's something I've seen so many times. Wudrich's lawyer, Farage, has, too.

Madeline Barron (22:59)

Farage described for the jurors how the IED exploded. It was quite dramatic. He said, talking about his boots quelched the ground beneath his feet, and he walked into this dust storm. Fraj told the jury that Wouterich saw Tarazas shattered body with both legs gone, arm gone, and he knew he was dead. Farage's opening statement was also about casting doubt on the government's evidence against Wouterich in all kinds of ways. Fraj implied to the jury that Wouteritch's squad mates were either lying to the jury or were confused about what really happened. Fraj suggested that NCIS had used lengthy interrogation sessions to get the Marines to say what they wanted them to say. He offered that Marines couldn't see much inside the houses because their safety glasses were scratched and dusty. And above all else, Farage emphasized that it was other Marines, not Wouterich, who were responsible for what happened. Farage closed by asking the jury to, quote, give Staff Sergeant Woodrich's life back, to put Haditha behind us and to move on. And then the government began to present its evidence to the jury. Over two weeks, the government put on a parade of witnesses to testify against Wouterich. There were two forensic pathologists who showed the jurors many of the photos that the Marines had taken of the bodies. The pathologists noted how many of the victims had been shot in the head from relatively close up. There was an expert on the rules of engagement. And then there were Wouterich's own squad mates. Five of them came into the courtroom to testify against their former squad leader, Sonic Delacruz testified about the first killings of the day, the shooting of the five men by the white car. He told the jury that Wouterich opened fire on the men even though they weren't doing anything threatening or suspicious. And there was testimony about what happened inside the houses. Umberto Mendoza testified that Wouterich told him to shoot whoever answered the door at one of the houses. And so Mendoza said, that's why he killed the man who came to the door, because his squad leader told him to. And then there was Stephen Tatum. Tatum told the jury that he'd seen Wouterich shooting in two houses. First in the living room of one house and then in the back bedroom of the house nearby where so many children were killed with their mom on a bed. But there were problems with these witnesses. For one, it was clear that many, or maybe even all of these witnesses didn't want to be there. And they hadn't always told the same story about what happened that day. For some of them, their stories had shifted over the years. The defense made a big deal out of this at trial. And there was something else. These witnesses weren't random people who'd happened to see what happened that day. Most of them were involved in it themselves. They were shooters, too. And some of them had done other things that day that the defense was eager to highlight for the jury. In the case of Dela Cruz, he'd also told investigators that he'd beaten some Iraqis he detained that day, kicked them in a way that wouldn't leave any marks. And he told investigators that sometime after the killings, he'd returned to the white car and stood over the body of one of the dead men lying there. He told investigators, I had to piss at the time, and I was pissed off that TJ had died. So I decided to piss on one of the dead Iraqi males outside the white car. I remember that I pissed inside the head of the dead Iraqi, the one with half of his head blown off. One set of voices the jury never heard were those of the Iraqi. The videotape depositions of Safa, Abdelrahman and Iman, the three children whose parents had been shot to death by the Marines. Although the prosecution put the children through the painful process of having them go step by step through every detail of their parents deaths, everything they'd witnessed, every detail they could recall, in the end, the prosecutors opted not to use a single word of it. Sitting in the courtroom listening to all this was a lawyer who worked for a high ranking Marine Corps commander. This commander wasn't in the courtroom himself, but he was the one responsible for what the prosecutors were doing. His role is so important in this case that I want to take a minute to explain it the way it worked back then. In the military, the commander oversaw every major decision the prosecutors made. Big decisions like granting immunity or reducing charges required the commander's approval. It was the commander in the Haditha cases who dismissed the charges against Sherritt and wrote him that glowing letter. It was the commander who Signed off on the immunity deals given to Tatum and the other Marines. Nothing major in the case could happen without the commander's approval. This commander wasn't some lawyer sitting in an office somewhere. He was a general with thousands of troops under his control, responsible for all kinds of things that had nothing to do with criminal cases. There really isn't anything like this in the civilian criminal justice system. A powerful person who oversees everything that prosecutors are doing and has the power to approve or deny all of their most important decisions, but who doesn't necessarily have any legal education or experience. And this commander also had to consider other things that go far beyond what happened in the courtroom. Things like the effect of the case on troop morale and on the mission, even on the United States relationship with foreign governments. Things that most certainly do not come up in your typical criminal case in the civilian justice system. I should note that there have been some recent limits placed on the commander's power in some of these kinds of cases. They came about because of concerns about how sexual assault was being handled by the military. The Haditha case had gone on so long, it actually passed through several commanders. General Mattis had been in charge early on, but by the time Mutterich's case came to trial, it was the responsibility of a lieutenant general from Minnesota named Thomas Waldhouser. And the lawyer on Waldhauser's staff. The man who was in the courtroom watching it all unfold was a young attorney who, it turns out, would end up playing arguably the single most important role in what happened next.

Madeline Barron (45:49)

The Haditha case had collapsed completely. Completely. No convictions for the killings. No punishment for the deaths of 24 men, women and children. What to make of all this? What had happened? The way I saw it, the end of Wudrich's trial represented the culmination of years of questionable decisions, starting from the very day of the killings, when no one from the unit reported the incident as a possible wound war crime. That decision ended up delaying any investigation for months. And when there finally was an investigation, the one by Colonel Watt, it was friendly, grandfatherly, to use Watt's own words. And then, of course, there was the more serious NCIS investigation that had uncovered all kinds of damning evidence against a number of Marines. But rather than aggressively prosecute every one of them, the. The Marine Corps decided to drop the case against Justin Sharritt and the one against Sonic Dela Cruz and the one against Steven Tatum. When Frank Witterich's case finally made it to trial in a military courtroom, the prosecutors had stricken the names of the victims and instead referred to them by numbers, and had chosen not to use any of the statements made by the Iraqi eyewitnesses. Maybe because they were operating. Operating in a system where the jury was made up entirely of members of the Marine Corps who were unlikely to be sympathetic to the dead Iraqis or their families. The plea deal itself seemed to arise from a desire to just end the trial with some kind of conviction, no matter how low level the charge was or how lacking in punishment it would be. All of this was done on the recommendation of a junior lawyer who himself seemed surprised at how much power he'd been given and signed off on by a commander whose job was to protect the mission of the Marine Corps above all else. There wasn't one explanation for what had caused the case against Wouterich and the others to collapse. But all these individual explanations were all connected to something larger. At every turn, the problems with this case could be traced back to the fact that it was handled in house by the Marine Corps itself. That made me wonder, was this just one very messed up case, or was it part of a larger problem with how the military handles alleged war crimes? After the break, we try to answer that question.

Madeline Barron (49:12)

I wanted to know if what happened in the Haditha case, the failure to punish anyone for the killings, was an outlier. It made me wonder what happens in all the other cases of American service members accused of war crimes. I thought this might be fairly straightforward to find out because the military itself is supposed to keep track of its war crimes investigations. It's a requirement put in Place in 1974 after a notorious war crime, the killing of hundreds of civilians by U.S. army soldiers in My Lai, Vietnam. After those killings, the Department of Defense issued a directive ordering each branch of the military to keep their records on war crimes investigations in a central location, a depository. That way, in theory, anyone, a reporter, a member of Congress, you could request that information and get it. And so we asked each branch of the military to give us the records in their depositories, to make us a copy of everything in their giant box labeled War Crimes. Months passed. The army eventually sent us a confusing spreadsheet with columns of alphanumeric codes, almost no details about the incidents or what happened to the cases, and no information on the perpetrators. The Air Force sent us a PDF containing even less information with almost every important detail redacted the case numbers, the names of the perpetrators, their pay grades, all of it missing. And in a column labeled Victim, rather than list the actual names of the people harmed, most of the time it just said Society or Air Force. The Department of the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, wrote us a letter saying they'd searched, but quote, the depository did not contain any records. The box labeled war crimes appeared to be empty. We assumed records about these crimes had to exist somewhere in the military's files. But the military made it clear that if we wanted them, we would have to request them one by one, case by case. And that's how we entered into a not very fun guessing game with the US Military. They told us that they could release records on individual war crimes to us if we knew what the war crime was like, we'd have to give them a suspect's name or a date or a location. But how could we know these things without the military telling them? To us, it was like they were saying, if you can guess what's behind the curtain, we'll give it to you. We would have to find these war crimes on our own. And so we began combing through thousands of old news stories, reading human rights reports, consulting legal and medical journals, reading through so many detainee abuse records amassed by the aclu, looking basically everywhere we could. We decided to limit our search to records of violent war crimes allegedly committed by US service members in Iraq and Afghanistan. After 9 11, we'd find a mention of a possible war crime in a news story. We'd send the details to the military. We'd find another mention of a different war crime in a document published by the aclu. We'd send those details to the military. On and on it went, we kept sending them their own war crimes. One FOIA after another, more than 600 FOIA requests in all. Then another not so fun twist. The military ignored our FOIAs, or they denied them, or they would reply but not give us what we were looking for. So we sued them. Sued them multiple times in fact. And slowly over years, we managed to pry loose, case by case, the documents the military had in its own files. Document after document with allegations of horrific war crimes committed by Americans. Army soldiers pushing Iraqi men off bridges into the Tigris River. Marines waking a man in the middle of the night and kidnapping him from his own house, murdering him and planting a shovel with his body to make it look like he'd been digging a hole to bury an ied. A mother and her two daughters shot while weeding a bean field. An Afghan electrician shot in the head as he begged for his life. An Iraqi cowherder killed an Afghan doctor killed a wounded insurgent suffocated and shot. The torturing of detainees in endless different ways. Choking them, covering them in ice, beating them with the butts of guns, pushing them into barbed wire wire, shocking them, sticking dogs on them. In all, we collected information on 781 possible war crimes incidents that the military itself took seriously enough to investigate. Allegations of violent crimes like murder and assault committed by American service members in Iraq and Afghanistan. After 911 we had, it turned out, amassed what appeared to be the largest known collection of possible war crimes investigated by the US military. The sort of thing that you would think should just be readily available to anyone. The details of what the people we are sending to war are doing once they're there the details of the crimes that some of them committed and how the military handled those cases. We're publishing what we found online. You can see the records yourself by going to newyorker.com season three. Once we had all these records, we needed to analyze them to get beyond the anecdotes of individual cases and get a broader picture of what happens when allegations of war crimes entered the military justice system. We wanted to see how often the military actually charges convicts and punishes people accused of war crimes. So we read each document and entered important details on each case into a database. And then we took all of this and sent it to a researcher named John Roman. He specializes in analyzing data about the criminal justice system, and so we asked him to analyze ours.

Madeline Barron (56:01)

Looking at all this information with Roman, we discovered something quite startling. Most of the time, when these allegations of violent war crimes entered the military justice system, what happened was basically nothing the military would investigate, but determined that the incident wasn't really a crime or that the allegation couldn't be substantiated. More than 65% of the allegations the military investigated were dismissed like this. The records just filed away in a government office somewhere and forgotten. Of the remaining incidents, the ones that were determined to be criminal most of the time in the cases we had records for, the punishment for these crimes crimes was pretty minor. Some docked pay, a rank reduction, or a stern letter placed in a permanent file. There were a handful of cases that did result in years behind bars, but those were by far the exception. We found that fewer than one in five perpetrators connected to these crimes appeared to receive any kind of prison sentence at all. For those that did, the median sentence was just eight months. An army private first class who shot an Iraqi woman dead at a market, sentenced to six months confinement and kicked out of the military. A Marine lieutenant who was charged for shooting an unarmed motorcyclist in Afghanistan and shooting at another man, given nothing more than a letter of reprimand. An army Officer found guilty on two counts of negligent homicide for ordering the executions of two Iraqi men. Given a written reprimand and reduced pay for a year. A sergeant convicted of shooting an Afghan man in the neck, killing him. Sentenced to 90 days of hard labor, $3,000 of his salary forfeited and a rank reduction. A Marine reservist tried for beating multiple detainees, including one who later died. Demoted and Sentenced. Sentenced to 60 days hard labor and house arrest in the barracks, with allowances to visit the fitness center and the barbershop. A sentence that, by the way, was later reduced by a commander, a military policeman at Bagram Air Base, who admitted to striking two detainees, both of whom later died. Convicted of assault, maiming, and cruelty. Sentenced to only a reduction in rank and given an honorable discharge. Case after case of serious crimes like murder, treated like minor transgressions. And so there really is no accountability for war crimes, at least not when the people in charge of that accountability are members of the US Military.

Madeline Barron (58:57)

What happened to the case against Frank Wuderich and his squad mates for the killings in Haditha was not an anomaly. It was just business as usual. Shortly after the plea deal, Widerich told a reporter, ending up where I am now is probably the most fair and best scenario for me. Right now, I'm most focused on the future and trying to provide for my kids. Six months later, after leaving the Marine Corps, Wooderich paid a visit to his hometown of Meriden, Connecticut, to attend a golf tournament held to raise money for him and attend a steak dinner in his honor. All of this was part of a special new day in Meriden, Frank Wouterich Day. It had been organized by local veterans. Wouterich was pictured in the local paper buying raffle tickets at the Polish Legion of American Veterans. He was wearing plaid shorts. He'd grown a goatee. His hair was dyed blonde. Wouterich told the local paper, I wish there was something I could do that could change the perception of me. The only way is to live my life the best I can, be the best person I can for the survivors. They were left to find out on their own what had happened during Wouterich's trial. They all told us that no one from the US Military let them know that the trial had ended in a plea deal with no prison time for the survivors. There was no accountability, no justice. There was only a decision to be made about how to go on living without those things. For Ehab, whose husband was one of the four brothers killed in the final house, this decision about how to go on wasn't just about herself. Her son Bakr was just one when his father was killed and his younger brother Omar, was born. A few months after the killings, Eab told me she'd saved all the gifts that her husband's brothers had given to baby Bakker. She would show the presents to Bakr as though to say, see how excited your uncle to welcome a new baby into the family. See how much they loved you. She would show him the gifts and tell him, this was from your uncle Marwan. This was from your uncle Katan. She said, I tell Bakr, when you are not born yet, they were thinking about what to get you. She tried to be strong for her children. She talked to them every day about their father and uncles. She explained how they died. But she also shared good memories. She wanted her boys to be proud of them, to know that they were good men. Their house was full of photos of their father and his brothers. As the years passed and Bakr and Omar got a little older, Ehab would sometimes walk into a room and find the boys staring at the photos and crying. They would ask her, why don't we stay our father? And in those moments, Ehab had a thought. It was as though seeing her boys looking at these photos, she could see into the future, See two grown men consumed by anger, the kind of anger that can destroy a person's life. She told me, I didn't want them to carry hatred in their hearts. And so Ehab made a decision. She took down the photos. But she said, I will never forget. Next week, the final episode of season three of in the Dark. To see for yourself how the military justice system handles allegations of war crimes, go online and check out the database we've built. You can read the records for yourself and read summaries we've written of many of the incidents we were able to track down. You can also find the entire investigative file for the Hiditha case there, too. Explore all of this and more@newyorker.com C Season 3 in the Dark is reported and produced by me, Madeline Barron, managing producer Samara Freemark, producers Natalie Jablonski and Raymond Tungakar, and reporter Parker Yesko. In the Dark is edited by Catherine Winter and Willing Davidson Interpreting in Iraq by Aya Muthena Additional interpreting and translation by Aya Elshikarchi Additional translation by Shereen Khalid and a thank you to Iraq Body count for sharing their data with us and to the ACLU for its torture database. This episode was fact checked by Linnea Feldman Emeson Original music by Alison Layton Brown Sound design and mix by John Delor Our theme is by Gary Meister. Our art is by Emiliano Ponzi. Art direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Michael Love FOIA Legal representation from the FOIA team at Lovi and Lovi Legal review by Fabio bertoni. The Season 3 data project was directed by Parker Yesko with reporting, writing, editing and fact checking by the in the Dark team and Will Craft, Meg Martin, Hannah Wilentz and Cameron Foose. Data analysis by John Roman. In the Dark was created by American Public Media and is produced by the New Yorker. Our Managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The House the head of Global Audio for Conde Nast is Chris Bannon. The editor of the New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, you can send them to us@inthedarkewyorker.com and make sure to follow inthedark wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Vincent Cunningham. I'm Alex Schwartz. And I'm Nomi Frye. And we're Critics at Large, the New Yorker's flagship culture podcast.