Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Introducing: In the Dark – Season 3

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Today, we're bringing  you a special preview of the new season of the New Yorker investigative  podcast In the Dark, hosted by Madeleine  Baran. The series examines the killings of twenty-four civilians in  Haditha, Iraq, and asks why no one was held accountable for the crime. In Episode 1, a man in Haditha, Iraq, has a request for the In the Dark team: Can you investigate how my family was killed? In the Dark is available wherever you get your podcasts: https://link.chtbl.com/itds3exfeeddrop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, this is Josh Dean, host of Witness Fade to Black. You may have seen that not long ago, the Peabody Award-winning investigative podcast, In the Dark, joined the New Yorker. Now this week, after four years of reporting, In the Dark is releasing its third season. It is the most ambitious story they've done yet. It looks at a shocking crime

that was committed during the war in Iraq, the killings of 24 civilians by U.S. Marines. Over the course of nine episodes, the podcast reconstructs what happened that day in Haditha and sheds light on the failure of the U.S. military to bring the men responsible to justice. Whether you're a fan of true crime or not, this is an astonishing story

and some of the best investigative reporting you'll encounter this year. Now, here's the beginning of the first episode of season three of In the Dark. ["In the Dark"] Two years ago, I went to Iraq to talk to a man about what sounded like a murder. It had happened almost 17 years earlier.

The killing of the man's sister, his nephew, so many others. 24 people in all. It was a killing that had gone unpunished, where not a single person had ever gone to prison. A killing committed by U.S. Marines. The man whose family was killed is named Khaled Salman Rasif. He met me in the lobby of a hotel in the city of Erbil, Iraq. Should we go in?

No, no, no, no problem for me. We headed up to a room with our producer Samara Freemark and our interpreter, a woman named Ayah Muthana. We all sat down. Mr. Khalid, why don't you sit here? Okay. Can I get you a water or a coffee or anything like that? Some water.

Some water? Okay. I'd wanted to meet Khalid in his hometown. It's called Haditha. But traveling to Haditha is dangerous for Western journalists. Remnants of ISIS are still active in the region. So Khalid agreed to meet us in a safer place, in Erbil, in the north. He's thanking you for coming here.

He says that you had the longest wait. He's welcoming you guys to Iraq. Khalid's in his 50s. He's a lawyer, and he looks like one. He has short hair and a neat mustache, and despite the fact that he traveled eight hours to meet us, his dark suit and tie were immaculate. He pulled out his phone and started showing us pictures of his first grandchild.

I'm grandfather. Oh, congratulations. She'd been born just six months earlier. What's her name? She's Neba. Neba? Yes. We're happy.

Khaled used to speak English all the time, back when he needed to speak it, so he could talk to the American Marines who were occupying his town. But those days are long past. I'm sorry. You know, I am... because I don't go to any school to learn the English. It's very difficult. Therefore, I am sorry. It's been a while, but no, it's good. It's good?

Perfect? Almost perfect. Hahaha! It's been a while, but no, it's good. It's good? Yeah. Perfect? Almost perfect. Well, it's nice to meet you in person after just talking on the phone. He's also so happy to see you in person. They kind of gave up on anyone talking about this case again. They didn't forget they've been heartbroken every day since that day, but they gave up on someone talk about the case or someone pre-investigate the case. So he said that he was so thrilled and happy that a media is interested in coming all the

way for the truth to be told. The story Khalid wanted to tell me happened in Khalid's hometown, Haditha. Haditha is a pretty small city. It's in western Iraq, in the desert, but it's right on the banks of the Euphrates River. And so depending on where in Haditha you are, the place is either dry and dusty or lush with palm trees. Before the U.S. invaded, life there was quiet, sleepy even. Some people had small farms. They would grow cucumbers and melons.

Other people worked in the oil industry. On the weekends, they'd go drink tea and coffee in cafes along the river. It's the kind of place where it seemed like everyone knew everyone. But by the time Khalid's story begins, in 2005, all that had changed. The Iraq War had started two years earlier. The United States military had invaded, overthrown Saddam Hussein, and captured Baghdad.

But now the U.S. military was trying to establish control over the rest of the country, and that was proving more difficult. In Western Iraq, where Haditha is, an insurgency movement was growing. Foreign fighters from groups like al-Qaeda were starting to arrive. So terrorists... Qaeda started to make their appearance in Haditha city. Now when Khaled went to the marketplace, he'd see people he didn't recognize. People who weren't from Haditha city. Now when Khaled went to the marketplace,

he'd see people he didn't recognize. People who weren't from Haditha. People who spoke with foreign accents. From Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria. He'd see people with their faces covered, so that no one could see who they were. And he'd try to just keep his head down and stay out of their way.

In 2005, a battalion of U.S. Marines arrived in Haditha to try to drive the insurgents out. And now, there were two groups of outsiders in Haditha, both of them terrifying to the people in town. The insurgents would plant IEDs under Haditha's streets, and occasionally pop up to fire rounds at the Marines. The Marines spent their time patrolling, carrying their big guns, driving their big Humvees, looking for insurgents and caches of weapons and explosives, detaining people they deemed suspicious. They spent a lot of time searching houses.

They could burst into your home without warning. It could be late at night or early in the morning. They'd bust down your door with assault rifles drawn, and there was always the worry that if you made one wrong move, if you misunderstood a command barked out in English, they might just shoot you or zip tie your hands and fly you off to Bukka prison. Khalid told me that the people of Haditha

developed a kind of protocol for when the Marines showed up at their houses. They'd take all the old people and the women and children and put them in a back room, and then the men would go out and talk to the Marines, in English if possible, carefully, appeasingly. Welcome. You can enter and you can do anything. Please don't break anything. There is my mother here, my father here. Please, my wife is very sick. My children is very sick.

When I told them, sometime they good. But sometime they said, shut up and sit down. Don't talking with me anything. The Marines demanded total cooperation from the people of Haditha. cooperation from the people of Hiditha. They expected the people of Hiditha to give them intel about the insurgents, to tell the Marines where IEDs had been placed, where the weapons caches were hidden, to help them out in this fight against the bad guys.

But even if you had that information, helping the Americans meant putting your own life in danger. Because if you did help the Americans in any way, the insurgents could consider you a collaborator. If they saw any person from the local community talks to any American Marine, they would take them to Haditha's bridge. And they would cut their head and put it on their back. Put it on their back? Yes. And then just leave the body on the bridge?

Leave the body on the bridge. That sounds terrifying. He's saying that it was horrifying. And this is not only his experience, like he's saying that this was by a public situation for all of the people of Haditha. Al-Qaeda is working with us, and the Americans are working with us, and we are working with them. They wouldn't trust the Al-Qaeda, and they wouldn't trust the American military.

So they lived in this hard situation, terrifying moments, scared from both Al-Qaeda and the U.S. military. And he said that it was basically like hell. Yes, yes. Like the hell. It's like the hell. It's very hard.

Khalid said they had a saying back then. When two elephants fight, the only loser is the green grass. And that green grass, in this story, it was Khalid's family. If you'd like to continue listening to Season 3 of In the Dark, be sure to follow In the Dark, available wherever you get your podcasts.