Episode 9: Patient #8

Summary

In The Dark: Episode 9 – Patient #8

Release Date: September 17, 2024

Introduction

"In The Dark," hosted by Madeleine Barron and produced by The New Yorker, continues its acclaimed exploration of investigative journalism in Episode 9: "Patient #8." This episode delves into the harrowing events of the Haditha killings that occurred on November 19, 2005, and uncovers a previously overlooked victim, Mamdu Hamid. Through meticulous research and personal interviews, the episode sheds light on the complexities and concealed truths surrounding this tragic incident.

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Background: The Haditha Killings

The episode begins by revisiting the notorious Haditha killings, where U.S. Marines were reported to have killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. Samara Freemark, one of the producers, shares her initial understanding:

Samara Freemark [00:32]: "For years, while reporting on the Haditha killings, I thought what everyone else thought, that there were 24 civilians killed by Marines on November 19, 2005."

This number was consistently cited in news reports and congressional discussions, painting a grim picture of accountability within the military.

Uncovering the Hidden Victim

As the investigation deepens, Samara and her team stumble upon unsettling discrepancies in the official records. A pivotal moment occurs when they discover a reference to another incident involving the same Marines that day, which had not resulted in any charges or public awareness.

Natalie Jablonski [02:03]: "Hey, Madeline."

Samara Freemark [02:10]: "I found something that's kind of interesting."

The team finds a statement from Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt, revealing an additional shooting of a man who appeared to survive initially but was later identified as Mamdu Hamid.

The Mysterious Case of Mamdu Hamid

The narrative takes a critical turn when Samara identifies Mamdu Hamid as "Patient #8." Despite being shot in the head by Marines, Mamdu was still alive when he was medevaced to the American military hospital in Baghdad. However, his fate remained obscured, and his family was left in agonizing uncertainty for nearly two decades.

Samara Freemark [10:12]: "Manda Amid Hamid."

Further investigation reveals that Mamdu’s body was released to the Baghdad morgue without any identifying information, rendering him an anonymous casualty of the conflict.

Connecting with Mamdu’s Family

Determined to provide closure, Samara reaches out to Khalid Salman Rasif, a lawyer who lost 15 family members in the Haditha killings. Through Khalid, they connect with Mamdu’s brothers, Qasim and Juma Ahmad Hamad.

Natalie Jablonski [35:06]: "I wanted to begin by telling you how sorry I am about what happened to your family and to Mamdu."

The brothers recount the tragic morning of November 19, 2005, detailing how Mamdu and his companions were ambushed by Marines without any apparent provocation.

Juma Ahmad Hamad [16:26]: "Ask him to take the truck, go to Beiji to bring gas."

The brothers describe Mamdu’s final moments, emphasizing his humanity and the brutal circumstances of his death.

Juma Ahmad Hamad [19:17]: "They took Mamduh and they left."

The Quest for Truth

Samara’s investigation leads her to Pedro Garcia, a Marine who was present on the Black Hawk helicopter that transported Mamdu. Garcia’s testimony reveals a deep-seated animosity and refusal to assist in saving Mamdu’s life.

Francis Wolf [23:43]: "Why? And I remember saying, fuck you, piece of shit."

Despite Garcia’s hostile reaction, it becomes clear that Mamdu was alive upon his arrival at Al Asad Air Base but succumbed to his injuries shortly after.

Natalie Jablonski [27:22]: "So on his death certificate he's just listed as an unidentified John Doe."

Reuniting with Mamdu’s Remains

The breakthrough comes when Mana, a researcher, identifies Mamdu's photograph in the Medico Legal Institute’s archives. Juma, accompanied by Mana, identifies Mamdu among the morgue’s records, confirming his death and location.

Samara Freemark [32:38]: "They told him that if a family member wanted, they could come to the morgue and look at the photos and see if Mamdu was in them."

The family’s emotional journey culminates in the identification of Mamdu’s body, allowing them to finally bring him home for a proper burial.

Juma Ahmad Hamad [35:21]: "He was very friendly, used to have jokes with others."

Emotional Reckoning and Accountability

In a poignant finale, Khalid Salman Rasif reflects on the broader implications of Mamdu’s story, adding another layer to the burden of loss inflicted by the Haditha massacre.

Khalid Salman Rasif [38:25]: "If only they told us that he is dead. At that time, they did not only kill him, they killed him twice."

The episode concludes by emphasizing the enduring pain of families seeking truth and accountability, highlighting the systemic failures that allowed Mamdu’s story to remain hidden for so long.

Conclusion

"In The Dark: Patient #8" masterfully intertwines investigative journalism with personal narratives to uncover a deeply concealed tragedy. Through relentless pursuit and empathetic storytelling, the episode not only sheds light on Mamdu Hamid's fate but also critiques the broader issues of military accountability and the human cost of war. This powerful installment exemplifies "In The Dark’s" dedication to uncovering the truths that lie beneath the surface, offering a voice to those silenced by conflict.

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Notable Quotes

• Samara Freemark [00:32]: "For years, while reporting on the Haditha killings, I thought what everyone else thought, that there were 24 civilians killed by Marines on November 19, 2005."

• Juma Ahmad Hamad [19:17]: "They took Mamduh and they left."

• Francis Wolf [23:43]: "Why? And I remember saying, fuck you, piece of shit."

• Khalid Salman Rasif [38:25]: "If only they told us that he is dead. At that time, they did not only kill him, they killed him twice."

Production Credits

• Producer: Samara Freemark
• Host: Madeleine Barron
• Producers: Natalie Jablonski, Raymond Tungakar
• Reporter: Parker Yesko
• Editing: Catherine Winter, Willing Davidson
• Interpreting: Aya Muthana
• Additional Reporting: Namat Koshno (BBC Arabic)
• Sound Design: John Delore
• Music: Alison Layton Brown, Chris Julen, Gary Meister

Acknowledgments

The episode acknowledges the extensive collaboration among journalists, legal teams, translators, and field researchers who contributed to uncovering the truth behind Mamdu Hamid’s story. Special thanks are given to the FOIA legal team, researchers, and supporting staff for their unwavering commitment to investigative excellence.

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For more details, photos, and access to the investigative database, listeners are encouraged to visit newyorker.com/seasonthree.

Transcript

[Madeline Barron]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

[Samara Freemark]

For years, while reporting on the Haditha killings, I thought what everyone else thought, that there were 24 civilians killed by Marines on November 19, 2005. 24 victims. That's what's been reported in basically every news story about haditha. Allegations that U.S. marines murdered 24.

[Natalie Jablonski]

24 civilians died, 24 unarmed men, women.

[Samara Freemark]

Deaths of civilian, deaths of 24 of.

[Raymond Tungakar]

24 Iraqi citizens in the city of Haditha.

[Samara Freemark]

It's the number the military gave in press conferences.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

24 Iraqi men, women, and children.

[Samara Freemark]

The number that members of Congress used when they talked about the killings. Women and children. 24 people they killed. Now, this is the kind of stuff, this kind of stress. But as we got deeper and deeper into our reporting, we began to wonder if maybe that number was. Was wrong. This is the final episode of season three of in the Dark, Patient Number eight. One day, our producer, Samara, was reading through the thousands of pages of documents that we'd received by suing the military when she came across something that got her attention. Samara called to tell me about it.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Hey, Madeline.

[Samara Freemark]

Hi, Samara.

[Natalie Jablonski]

So I was calling you because I found something that's kind of interesting.

[Samara Freemark]

Hmm. Samara had found a reference to something else that happened in Haditha on the same day that the 24 people were killed. Something else the Marines had done that hadn't resulted in any charges and that none of us had ever heard of. The reference Samara had found came in one of the statements Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt had given to NCIS agents during the Haditha investigation. Most of Sharritt's statement was about things we already knew about, but there were a few lines about this other thing.

[Natalie Jablonski]

The exact time that this is happening is a little unclear, but it's maybe an hour or so after the ID has exploded.

[Samara Freemark]

And so this would be after they went into some of the Marines, went into some of the houses and killed some people.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Yes.

[Samara Freemark]

Sherritt described for investigators how after the Marines went into the first two houses, there was a pause in the shooting. Sharratt and Wouterich were outside looking around when Sharratt said they spotted a man on the road a few hundred meters away, and Wouterich just opened fire. Samara Read to me from Sherritt's statement.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Wouterich took his first shot but missed. I went to fire because Wooderich had fired, but my weapon failed to fire and jammed. Wouterich took a second shot and hit the individual, and I saw him fall. I did not see a weapon, and no one had shot at us.

[Samara Freemark]

Why did they shoot him? Why did Sherritt say they shot him?

[Natalie Jablonski]

Sherritt does not give a good explanation. He basically says, like, Woodrich started shooting, so I started shooting.

[Samara Freemark]

Sharrett said he never asked Wouterich why he shot at the man. And as far as Samara could tell from the records we had, Sherrett never mentioned the shooting to investigators again. Wouterich never talked to investigators about it at all. Samara went back to the documents, looking for any other references to this shooting, trying to figure out what had happened. And as she read, she realized this man who was shot apparently survived. Samara found documents that described other Marines finding him later that day in a nearby house. But as Samara kept reading, she realized that this shooting was only the beginning of the story, because it turned out that the man Woodrich and Cheritch shot at wasn't alone that day. He had been with several other men at the time. And it was what happened to one of those men that really got her attention. Most of the information Samara was finding came in a series of interviews NCIS investigators had conducted with a different squad of Marines, a group of Marines who weren't involved in the killings in the houses. This group was called Second Squad. Second Squad had been posted a little ways away from where Sherrit and Mutterich had been. And The Marines of 2nd Squad pick up the story from where Sherrit left off. They describe hearing the gunfire coming from Mudrich and Sherritt's position and spotting two.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Men riding, running through the area, fleeing Woodrich and Sharratt.

[Samara Freemark]

It appeared that what had happened was that after Wooderich shot the first man, the men who were with him started running away, and they ran right into the path of Second Squad. Some of the Marines of Second Squad spotted these two men running, according to their statements to ncis. They thought it looked suspicious, two men running and being shot at by Marines. They thought the men were insurgents. And so members of Second Squad opened fire and hit one of the men in the head. The man who'd been shot in the head fell to the ground. As the Marines watched, an Iraqi family came outside and picked up the man. They brought him inside their house. A little while later, someone approached the Marines waving a white flag, and led the Marines to the house. The Marines of 2nd Squad went inside and found the man that they had shot in the head. He was alive but badly injured.

[Natalie Jablonski]

They get inside and they find this Iraqi, the man who's been shot in the head. The family of the house has tried to help this guy. Like they've tied a towel around his head.

[Samara Freemark]

The Marines bandaged the man's head wound. They took photos of him, and then they radioed for a medevac, and they.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Put him on a door that they're using as a stretcher, and they bring him to a medevac site to wait for a medevac.

[Samara Freemark]

Then the Marines loaded the man onto a Black Hawk helicopter and flew away. Who was this man who'd been shot in the head? What happened to him? Had he survived? The Marine statements didn't say, and the man's name wasn't in any of the documents Samara had read. We thought maybe the Marines in second Squad, the squad who shot him, could help fill in the blanks. And so we talked to as many of them as we could. Some of them told us they couldn't remember anything about the shooting. Others were particularly unhappy to see us. Like when our producer, Raymond stopped by the home of one of the Marines.

[Francis Wolf]

Um, that did not go well.

[Samara Freemark]

The man threatened to call the police. And he appeared to take a photo of Raymond's license plate and said he would be blasting a photo of Raymond to his Marine Corps groups to make sure that no one talked to him ever again. Our producer, Natalie, went to see the leader of second Squad, a man named Francis Wolf. Wolf had told investigators he'd shot at the men because he thought they were insurgents and posed a threat. When Natalie knocked on his door, Wolf opened it. And before Natalie could say anything, you get the fuck off my porch, okay? Get the fuck out of here. Don't ever come back, okay? I'm so sorry. We don't want to deal with this shit no more. Get out of here.

[Pedro Garcia]

I didn't mean to bother you.

[Samara Freemark]

These Marines were definitely not interested in helping us. They just sent their dog after me. Fortunately, the dog didn't seem to be too mean. But then one day, a clue. It came in the batch of photos the military had sent us after we sued them. Most of those photos were of the 24 known victims of the Haditha killings, but there were a few other photos of someone else entirely. They show a man lying on his back on a bright red carpet. The man is wearing white pants and A beige distacia. His head is bloody. Someone had placed a white towel underneath it. His head injury looked serious, but it appeared the man in these photos might still have been alive. There were two other photos of the man, both of them close up. Shots taken of the man's tattoos. One of the tattoos was on his left hand. A small black circle with some kind of mark in the middle. The other tattoo was on the man's arm. A small but unmistakable letter in black ink. The letter M.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Okay, so I am scanning through some of these records we got from ncis.

[Samara Freemark]

One afternoon, Samara was reading through another batch of records, recording herself, as we often do.

[Natalie Jablonski]

And I've been just going through all of these hundreds of pages and pulling out anything I could find on this guy who was shot in Haditha on November 19.

[Samara Freemark]

And deep in the investigative file, she found something.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Oh, wait a second.

[Samara Freemark]

A pair of documents describing the man shot by Marines and airlifted out of Haditha.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Hold on a second.

[Samara Freemark]

And these documents alone, out of all the reports we had received, contained.

[Natalie Jablonski]

There is a name in here.

[Samara Freemark]

A name.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Manda Amid Hamid.

[Samara Freemark]

Manda Amid Hamid. We'll be back after the break. 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.

[Raymond Tungakar]

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 Zack might be moved, moving about London, pretending to be someone else altogether.

[Samara Freemark]

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/ this mysterious other shooting of a man with a tattoo of the letter M, this man, whose name, according to those documents, was Manda Hamet, made Samara think back to a story we'd heard more than a year earlier. Back when we were in Erbil, we were with our interpreter talking to Khalid Salman Rasif, the lawyer who'd lost 15 members of his family that day. Khalid Had a lot of information to share about his family. What they were like, what he saw that day, Everything he'd done to try to get the killings of the 24 people investigated. In the middle of all this, Khalid briefly mentioned that there was a woman in Haditha who'd come to him for help. Shortly after the killings.

[Mana]

He ran into a mother who told him about her missing son. On the same day of the incident.

[Samara Freemark]

The woman told Khalid that her son had gone out that morning and never came home and she hadn't seen him since. She asked Khalid for help figuring out what had happened to him. And Khalid tried. He told us he asked the marines about the woman's son multiple times. Khaled.

[Mana]

All the time when he was meeting with the Americans, he was asking about him. And they all the time told him that we don't know this person. We don't know what happened to him. We know nothing about him.

[Samara Freemark]

Khalid said that for years this mother would come to him asking about her son.

[Mana]

And he was very shy from her because he didn't have any information about the son. Nobody knows anything about him.

[Samara Freemark]

Khaled said he felt ashamed that he was never able to give the mother any answers. Khalid told us this story almost as an aside. We moved on to other things. But now, Samara wondered, could there be a connection between this missing man and that mysterious other shooting of a man named something like Manda Hamid? Back when we talked to Khalid, he didn't remember the missing man's name. So Samara texted Khalid and asked him if he could track it down. And right away, Khalid sent Samara a voice memoir. Hello.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Mamdu Hamad. That is name.

[Samara Freemark]

Mamdu Hamid. The document had said Manda Hamid. Not exactly the same, but close. We asked Khalid if he could connect us with Mamdu's family, and he agreed. Mamdu's mother, who'd asked Khalid for help all those years ago, died in 2013. But Mamdu's brothers are still alive. Yes. Here, please. So he asked Namak Hoshnau, the BBC reporter we are working with, to go with an interpreter to meet them. So thanks very much for coming. Could you please introduce yourselves? Your name? The brothers names are Qasim. Qasim Ahmad Hamad.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Ahum.

[Samara Freemark]

And Juma.

[Raymond Tungakar]

Juma Ahmad Hamad.

[Samara Freemark]

They all met at Khalid's house. And the brothers told Namak more about Mamdu and what happened that day. Back in 2005, Mamdu was 27 years old. He was charming, outgoing. His brothers described him as the Kind of guy who got along with everyone.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

He was very friendly, used to have jokes with others. He mixed with people. He established good relationship and friendship with others.

[Samara Freemark]

A cousin later sent us a picture of Mam Du. He's looking right at the camera, grinning, a huge grin. A person next to him is giving him bunny ears.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

A lovely guy.

[Samara Freemark]

The family lived in Haditha, in a neighborhood a little ways away from where Khalid's family lived. Before the war, Mamdou and his brothers worked in construction. But when the Americans arrived, that kind of work dried up. So the brothers started doing all kinds of odd jobs, just trying to scrape a living together. On the morning of November 19, 2005, the brothers had a job to do. A guy who ran an operation selling gas around Haditha wanted them to walk to a nearby town to pick up one of his trucks.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

Ask him to take the truck, go to Beiji to bring gas.

[Samara Freemark]

Mamdu and his brother Juma set off on foot with two of their cousins, Haider and Yassin. The men didn't know that anything out of the ordinary had happened that morning. They'd been too far away to hear the IED explode and too far away to hear any of the shooting that followed.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

They didn't know there was an incident.

[Samara Freemark]

The men walked through the town, out of their neighborhood and into Khalid Salman Recif's. The streets were quiet. And then out of nowhere.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

The Americans started shooting them.

[Samara Freemark]

There were Marines on the street a few hundred meters away, firing at them. What Mamdu's brothers were describing appeared to be the moment that Lance Corporal Justin Sherritt described in his statement to investigators. The moment, he said, Wouterich opened fire on a man and so he tried to shoot, too. Sharratt hadn't given investigators a clear reason why they were shooting at the man. And the men told Namak they had no idea why the Marines were shooting at them. They said they weren't carrying weapons or anything that could have been mistaken for a weapon. They're just walking through town. The Marines didn't call out any warning. They just started shooting. The men ran, trying to escape. But one of the Marines bullets hit, hit Yasine in the stomach and ripped through his back. Yasin fell face first to the ground. Mamdu stopped running. He checked on Yasin. Are you okay? Are you alive? Yasin said. Go. Run. A neighbor pulled Yasin into a nearby house. He was eventually taken to a hospital, and he survived. Mamdu, Juma and Haider kept running. Unbeknownst to them, they were Running right into another squad of marines, second squad. And then.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

So his brother Mamduh was shot in his head.

[Samara Freemark]

Mamdu was hit, too. Neighbors got Mamdu into a house. His cousin Haider went into the house with him. Haider later told his family what happened inside. How Mamdu, despite his head wound, was still conscious as he lay on the floor of the house. How he was praying and asking Haider to take care of the family. Haider told the family how a group of marines entered the house and carried Mamdu out to an American helicopter. Mamdu's brother Juma watched from a distance as the helicopter lifted off.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

They took Mamduh and they left.

[Samara Freemark]

And that was the last anyone in Haditha ever saw of Mamdu Hamid. In the days and weeks and months and eventually years that followed, the families searched for mom doo. They had no idea what had happened to him. They didn't know if he was alive or dead, if he'd been treated by the Americans, or if he'd been arrested and was now in prison.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

We keep worrying and keep asking every day and night, where is Mamdua? Where's Mamdua? Is he still alive?

[Samara Freemark]

The family tried everything to find him. Mamdu's brothers Juma and Qasem would go with their mother to the American base over and over again, begging for any information, good or bad, about what had happened to their brother. The marines didn't offer them any answers. At one point, someone at the base told them.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

He was handed to the Iraqi forces.

[Samara Freemark]

Maybe Mamdu had been handed over to Iraqi forces. And so the family found a relative who had access to the computer database that contained records of the people the Iraqis were holding. The man ran a search for Mamdu.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

So he checking all the computers for Iraqi forces, other Iraqi security forces.

[Samara Freemark]

But the search came up empty. The family kept trying. Jummah and Qasem traveled with their mother to prisons all over Iraq, checking to see if Mamdu was being held in any of them. Baghdad looking, but he wasn't. Qasim said their mother refused to stop, hoping that Mamdu might still be out there somewhere and that one day they might find him.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

She didn't stop looking for him. She knocked all the doors. Mr. Khalid, Baghdad American Iraqi forces she didn't give up.

[Samara Freemark]

And she wouldn't allow Juma and Qasem to stop looking either. Juma and Qasim never gave up hope they might one day find Mam Du. But after their mother died, they did stop searching. They Told Naamak that they wanted to end this anguish of not knowing if Mamdu was dead. They wanted to know, maybe even find his body and bring it home for a proper burial. And, of course, if their brother was still out there somewhere alive, they wanted to find him. But it had been so long. Almost 20 years. They tried everything, looked everywhere, talked to everyone. But they'd never been able to find Mom Du. And so we decided to try. The last time anyone in the family had seen Mamdu, he was being put onto a US Military helicopter after being shot by Marines in the head. But he was still alive at that point, even still talking. According to his family, we actually managed to find a Marine who was on that Black Hawk helicopter that day. His name is Pedro Garcia. He'd been wounded that day in a different engagement in another part of town. Garcia remembers being told by someone that the Iraqi man being loaded onto the Black Hawk with him was responsible for the IED that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Tarazas.

[Francis Wolf]

I look over and I'm like, who the hell is this? And then one of the guys from 1st Platoon, they're like, excuse my language, but you're like, that's a piece of shit that fucking that pulled the trigger on the ied.

[Samara Freemark]

And I'm like, why?

[Francis Wolf]

Why is he here?

[Samara Freemark]

Why?

[Francis Wolf]

Why? And I remember saying, fuck you, piece of shit.

[Samara Freemark]

Mamdu, of course, was not the trigger man. But Garcia didn't know that. Onboard the chopper, Mamdu was hooked up to oxygen.

[Francis Wolf]

He didn't look good.

[Samara Freemark]

Someone asked Garcia if he would squeeze the oxygen bag to help Mamdu breathe.

[Francis Wolf]

And I remember it was a crew chief, he told me. He goes, hey, I need you to blow the little masking with a little ball to you. Squeeze it. And pumps air. Pump air into him to keep the circulation. He wanted me to do that to him, to the Iraqi guy. And I. I literally told him it might have been cold, but when they told me who. Who that person was, and then knowing that one of my buddies is killed, I told him, excuse my language, but go fuck yourself. Fucking let him die.

[Samara Freemark]

Mamdu didn't die. Another Marine ended up squeezing the oxygen bag. And Mamdu was still alive when the Black Hawk landed near the hospital at Al Asad Air Base, Samara found records of interviews that NCIS investigators did with medical personnel who worked at the hospital on the base. And they tell what happened after Mamdu arrived.

[Natalie Jablonski]

He's flown to the hospital at the American base at Al Asad. And when he arrives at Al Asad. He's in pretty bad shape, but he is still alive and Al Asad doesn't have a name for him and they have no identifying information at all. So the front desk clerk enters him into the patient log as enemy prisoner of war. Patient number eight.

[Samara Freemark]

At the hospital at Al Asad, medical staff intubated Mamdu, who they called patient number eight. Then they loaded him onto another helicopter bound for a hospital in Baghdad run by the American military. We have a statement that a Marine who was on that flight to Baghdad gave to investigators. This Marine's job was to guard Mamdu. On the helicopter ride, he was accompanied by a nurse. The Marine told investigators that the chopper landed in Baghdad on a helipad near the hospital. The Marine then loaded Mamdu into a six wheel ATV and drove to the hospital. They went inside. It was full of military personnel. A second lieutenant told the Marine he'd have to fill out some paperwork about the patient he was guarding. The Marine asked if he could use the bathroom first. When he returned, the second lieutenant told him, don't worry about the paperwork. The man you brought us is dead. It isn't clear exactly what happened in Mamdu's final moments or exactly when he died. It seems it could have happened on the second helicopter ride, the one to Baghdad. We requested Mamdu's full medical records from the US military, but they refused to provide them. We do know that despite his head injury, Mamdu was considered stable when he left Al Asad, headed to Baghdad. The limited records we did manage to obtain say that he died, quote, as a result of a penetrating injury to the brain. The American military hospital in Baghdad wrote out a death certificate. They didn't have any identifying information.

[Natalie Jablonski]

So on his death certificate he's just listed as an unidentified John Doe.

[Samara Freemark]

The hospital in Baghdad held Mamdu's body for five days, not knowing who this person was and therefore having no way to contact the family. On November 24, 2005, they released his unidentified remains to the Baghdad morgue. Samara wanted to find out if the Morgan Baghdad might know what happened to Mamdu's body. So we hired a researcher based in Baghdad to help us.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Hello?

[Natalie Jablonski]

Hi, can you hear me?

[Samara Freemark]

Yes.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Hello? Hi, hi, I'm trying to reach.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Yes I am.

[Samara Freemark]

The researcher didn't want us to use.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

His real name because like honestly, it is not safe for me, honestly to show for public that I'm working with American that will like make some trouble for me.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Is there a name that I could use that would be safe for you just to give me something to call you.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

You can just say manna. Okay. That will be fine.

[Samara Freemark]

Mana was familiar with the Baghdad morgue. Its official name is the Medico Legal Institute. Manat told Samara that unfortunately, everyone who lived in Baghdad during the war was familiar with the Medical Legal Institute because it seemed like everyone had known someone whose body ended up there.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Especially, like, Baghdad residents, they do have, like, bad experience about this institute, because myself, my friends have lost their relatives, their friends in this institute.

[Samara Freemark]

Manat had actually gone to the institute himself sometime back in 2007 or 2008 to help a friend search for a missing family member. They'd sorted through mounds of bodies piled on the floor, but the body they were looking for wasn't there.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

You can, like, smell death in every corner in every corridor of this institute.

[Samara Freemark]

Mana agreed to go back to the Medico Legal Institute and see what he could find out about what had happened to Mamdu's body. Two weeks later, Samara got back on a call with him.

[Natalie Jablonski]

What was it like to go back there?

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Oh, I got, like, flashes from what happened, from these memories. Like, you know, all the images, like, even the smells, it was, like, really shocking me.

[Samara Freemark]

Mana told Samara what he'd learned during his trip to the institute. He said the staff there told him what it was like back in the mid-2000s, at the time Mamdu was killed. The country of Iraq back then was in chaos, triggered by the American invasion. Civil society had collapsed. There was basically no functioning anything. There were insurgents and warring militia groups. The city of Baghdad was filled with the sound of constant blasts from car bombs, shootings, explosions. Hundreds of people were dying each day. And the Medical Legal Institute was a place where the bodies of many of these people ended up.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

The situation was, like, really bad at the time because they didn't have enough space in the refrigerators to keep all of the bodies. So when it was full, they just stacked the bodies outside or in the sidewalk or everywhere. It was really chaotic.

[Samara Freemark]

Staff at the morgue couldn't keep up with all the death. They couldn't process all the bodies in any kind of coherent way. They couldn't store them. And almost none of the bodies that were arriving at the morgue came with any identifying information. But the staff at the institute told Manat that there was one thing the workers at the morgue back then were able to do in the midst of all this chaos. Something that now seems pretty remarkable. The workers at the morgue looked ahead to a time when Things might be less violent, less chaotic. A time when people might be better able to come looking for information about their dead loved ones. And so the workers at the morgue took photographs of all of these bodies.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Pictures for the bodies, like, for everyone who was delivered to this institute. They have photos for everyone.

[Samara Freemark]

Photos of everyone labeled with the date that the body had arrived. After the morgue, workers would photograph an unclaimed unidentified body. The morgue would coordinate with cemeteries to arrange to have the body picked up and buried in one of them. The morgue kept track of all of this. Even now, they had records of where each body had gone. According to the US military records Samara had reviewed, the body of Mamdu Hamid had been turned over by the Americans to the morgue on November 24, 2005.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Do they have photos from November 24, 2005?

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

[Samara Freemark]

Wow. Yeah.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

So basically, like, according to this, we might find the body of the man that we are looking for.

[Samara Freemark]

The morgue told Mana they couldn't show him the pictures. But they said that if a family member wanted, they could come to the morgue and look at the photos and see if Mamdu was in them. And if he was, the morgue would consult its records and be able to tell the family where Mom Du's body was buried. We'll be back after the break.

[Pedro Garcia]

On October 3, 1980, a bomb was detonated outside a synagogue on Copernic street in Paris. Three decades later, French investigators finally identified a suspect in the case. A Lebanese Canadian sociology professor living a quiet life on the outskirts of Ottawa, Canada. Is Hassan Diab guilty? Can you introduce yourself or is he a scapegoat? Hassan Diab from Canada Land this is the Copernic Affair. Listen, wherever you get your podcast.

[Samara Freemark]

Samara wanted to tell Mamdu's family everything she'd learned. But she wanted someone to be there with them, helping to convey this information. So she asked Manat to meet with Mamdu's family in person. Mana met Mamdu's brothers Qasim and Jummah at Khalid Salman Rasif's house. They all sat down together on a couch in Khalid's living room. They poured some tea. Amanak called Samara in by phone.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Hi, Samara.

[Samara Freemark]

Hello.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

I'm with Mr. Khalid and Qasim and Juma.

[Samara Freemark]

Hi, Mr. Joma and Mr. Qasim.

[Natalie Jablonski]

It's very nice to meet you. Thank you for talking to me.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Thank you. Samara, go ahead.

[Natalie Jablonski]

I wanted to begin by telling you how sorry I am about what happened to your family and to Mamdu. For the past several years, me and my team have been working on an investigation into what happened in Haditha on November 19th of 2005 when many civilians were killed by American Marines.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Yes.

[Natalie Jablonski]

While doing that reporting, we obtained some documents that I believe are about your brother Mamdu and what happened to him that day.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

Yes.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Would you like me to share with you what I've learned from those documents?

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

The only wish that they have, they want to know like eagerly what happened to their brother.

[Natalie Jablonski]

Okay. So the records that I have show that Mamdu, as you know, was shot by Marines on the morning of November 19th in Haditha.

[Samara Freemark]

Samara told Juma and Qasem Hamamdu was flown out of Haditha.

[Natalie Jablonski]

He was medevaced to Al Asad Air Base. How?

[Samara Freemark]

He was taken to Al Asad and treated there.

[Natalie Jablonski]

He was treated at Al Asad for about an hour.

[Samara Freemark]

And then put on another helicopter and sent on to the American military hospital in Baghdad. But before he could be treated at.

[Natalie Jablonski]

That hospital, Mamdu died from the gunshot wound to his head. I am so sorry to be the one telling you this news. I know this is probably not the news that you wanted to receive, but I felt it was really important that you know this.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

This is his fate. And we are really, really appreciate you telling us what happened to him. And now we can relieve at least finally knowing what happened to our brother Khalid.

[Samara Freemark]

Salman Rasif was in this meeting. And at this moment, he began to speak. Ever since the day of the killings, Khalid had felt a burden. A burden of being responsible for 24 people. It had shaped his entire adult life. And now sitting there in this meeting, Khalid was realizing there was actually one more victim to add. His burden had grown even heavier. There were now 25 victims of the Haditha killings. 25 people killed by US Marines that day. Mamdu's family was grateful to Samarra, but also angry. Why had it taken so long for anyone to tell them that their brother was dead? It was clear from the documents Samara was sharing with them that the US military had known for nearly 20 years that Mamdu was dead. And so that whole time that the family had been asking the Marines traveling to bases and prisons across Iraq, pleading with anyone and everyone for information. The truth was in the possession of the US military all along.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

If only they told us that he is dead. At that time, they did not only kill him, they killed him twice. One, when they killed him like in reality. And second, when they didn't tell about what happened to him.

[Samara Freemark]

We asked the US Marine Corps why they didn't tell Mamdu's family the truth years ago, they didn't answer. When we asked Major Dana Hyatt, the former civil affairs officer in Haditha, about Mamdu, he told us he couldn't remember anyone who fit that description. In that meeting with Mamdu's family, there was one more thing to talk about.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

They asking about the body.

[Samara Freemark]

Samara explained that Mana had gone to the Medico Legal Institute in Baghdad and talked to people who work there and learned that there might be records of Mamdu there.

[Natalie Jablonski]

They have pictures of bodies that were turned over by the Americans on that day, November 24th. Family members, if they want to, can go to the morgue, to the Medico Legal Institute and look at the pictures and try to identify their loved ones.

[Khalid Salman Rasif]

They eagerly want to know what happened and to get the corpse, or at least where they buried his body.

[Samara Freemark]

On a cool, dry morning in January, Mamdu's brother Juma woke up early and started off on the long drive from Haditha to Baghdad. The conversation he'd had with Samara had provided some relief. But in the days after that conversation, Juma started to doubt. It had been so many years, years and years of conflicting information, years of being told one thing and then told another thing and never being able to know anything for sure. Juma still wasn't convinced his brother was dead. In Baghdad, Juma met up with Mana, and they headed to the Medico Legal Institute. On the drive over, Juma told Mana how he was feeling anxious. His emotions were all mixed up. He said he wanted the relief that he thought would come from knowing for sure what had happened to Mamdu. But Juma said, he's my brother and sometimes I don't know. I would rather live with the hope that he's still alive and maybe one day he'll walk back in the door of our family's home. When Juma and Mana arrived at the Medical Legal Institute, they were led through the busy halls to a section of the morgue called the Office of Missing Persons. They were shown to a room with a large screen mounted on the wall. Jima couldn't sit. He was too nervous. And so he stood gazing at the screen as an employee started up a computer and a slideshow began, one picture after another of dead Iraqi men delivered to the morgue in the month of November 2005 and never identified so many dead men. Men dead of gunshot wounds, men with their bodies blown apart, each one with Their own family, their own story. An entire life reduced to a photograph of their remains being flashed up on the screen and replaced by another. They kept flipping through photos. Old people, young people, middle aged people. So many bodies. By one estimate, the war in Iraq left around 300,000 Iraqis dead. One photo flashed up onto the screen, then another, then another. Until Juma called out, that one. That one. And there was Mam Du. You could see the gunshot to his head, but his face was clean and you could see his features clearly. There was a yellow piece of paper on his chest with a handwritten note saying the body had been delivered by the American military. Mamdu, after all these years, had been found. Mamdu's family is now working to have his body exhumed from the cemetery where he was buried as an unidentified man so they can finally bring him home to Haditha. On an afternoon in early Sept. Spring, Khalid Salman Rasif, the man who lost 15 members of his family, walked down a crowded street in Haditha with Namak, the BBC reporter we are working with in Iraq. They opened a small metal gate that led into a courtyard. The ground was taken and in the dirt you could see circles of carefully placed stones. These were the graves of Khalid's family members killed on November 19, 2005. There were larger circles of stones and next to them, several smaller circles. Parents buried next to their children. Khalid Salman stood in this graveyard on this crowded street and began to cry. There was the grave of Khalid's sister Asma. Asma, who died with her arm around her four year old son Abdullah, in the corner of their living room. Abdullah would now be 23 years old, maybe a university student, maybe considering a family of his own. Instead, he was lying dead in a grave next to his mother and father. There was the grave of Yunus and his wife Ida, the mother who died on a bed surrounded by her children. The children's graves were there too. Her 8 year old son Mohammed, 10 year old Seba, 15 year old Noor and the youngest children, 5 year old Zaynab and 3 year old Aisha. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Each family a whole world gone in just seconds. Khalid Salman Rasif stood there among the graves. He said they had dreams, ambitions, families. The wind moved through the palm trees. The call to prayer rose up over the city. The traffic rushed past. They were people, he said.

[Raymond Tungakar]

SA.

[Samara Freemark]

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 Muthana Additional reporting and investigating in Iraq by BBC Arabic's Namat Koshno Field producer Haider Ahmed and Mana Additional interpreting and translation by Aya L. Shikarchi Additional translation by Shereen Khalid and Lucy Kroenig this episode was fact checked by Shereen Khalid and Ismail Ibrahim Original music by Alison Layton Brown Additional music by Chris Julen and Gary Meister Sound design and mix by John Delore Our theme is by Gary Meister. Our art is by Emiliano Ponzi Art direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Michael Love Research Help in London by Samira Shackle FOIA Legal representation from the FOIA team at Lovie and Lovie Legal Review by Fabio Bertoni in the Dark was created by American Public Media and is produced by the New Yorker. This season was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Our Managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The editor of newyorker.com is Michael Luo. The digital director is Monica Rasik. The head of Global Audio for Conde Nast is Chris Fannon. The editor of the New Yorker is David Remnick. A big thank you to our FOIA legal team for their many long hours and commitment to this work. They're seriously the best. Thank you to the entire team. Matt Topic, Josh Lovie, Steven Stitch Match Merrick, Wayne Rachel Un, Blake Bunting, Megan Shinker and Becky Shertak. And thanks to Ben and Pam Holland at Spotland Productions, Aya El Shakarchi for her tireless work on this series. Alex Papakristu at Lawyers for Reporters and Kevin Parmalee for his assistance with the forensic analysis for this series. A special thanks to our former colleagues at APM Reports who contributed to or supported the early work on this series. Dave Mann, Andy Cruz, Will Kraft, Jeff Hing, Tom Scheck, Curtis Gilbert, Sasha Islanian, Shelley Langford, Lauren Humpert and to Chris Worthington, who's believed in and supported our journalism since the early days and cares about the people behind the work too. And a big thank you to Sam Wilson and David kofall for their 3D visualization work for New Yorker.com and to Nathan Burstein, Katie Cleveland, Laura Derzeit, Madison Houston, Whitney Holmes, Lindsey Ederheimer, Ben Richardson, Nico Steele and Aaron Weaver for all their work to help the show find its audience. And a special thank you to Chris Bannon and David Remnick for bringing in the Dark to the New Yorker to send us your thoughts on the series or to give us ideas for what we should investigate next. You can send us an email at inthedarker and make sure to stay subscribed to inthedark wherever you get your podcasts so you won't miss what we do next. For more on this series, including photos, our database, and much more, go to newyorker.com season three.

[Raymond Tungakar]

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the Godfather of Artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen.

[Juma Ahmad Hamad]

To podcasts.

[Samara Freemark]

From PRX.