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Silflay Hraka has the best analysis I’ve seen yet regarding the recent incident of one of our soldiers in Falluja shooting a prisoner:
From the BBC.
He said a marine noticed one prisoner was still breathing.
A marine can be heard saying on the pool footage provided to Reuters Television: “He’s f***ing faking he’s dead.”
“The marine then raises his rifle and fires into the man’s head,” Sites said.
Assuming that the Marine in question is charged with breaking the rules of war that Amnesty International complains about later on in the second story, and not some other violation, I suspect he’ll walk.
Silflay quotes a report in which terrorists feigned surrender using a white flag, and then attacked:
“In one incident, some Iraqis are reported to have come out of a building waving a white flag. When a Marine approached this group, insurgents opened fire on the Marines from different directions.”
Silflay finds that the soldier acted correctly:
There’s nothing to suggest that the enemy combatant had previously surrendered, and “hors de combat” is basically a judgment call. If there’s reason to suspect he was faking, then the safest thing to do is shoot him some more—especially given the fact that the enemy in Falluja has demonstrated that they are perfectly happy faking a surrender in order to kill Americans.
Read the whole thing. I’d also like to make the additional point that, by feigning surrender in incidents such as that involving a white flag, the terrorists violated the Geneva Conventions:
Article 37, paragraph 1, of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I)[2]
It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary and resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy: (a) the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender; (b) the feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness;* (c) the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and (d) the feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not parties to the conflict.
