BBC:
“This is the room where my whole family was killed,” says Safa Younes.
Bullet holes pepper the front door to the house in the Iraqi town of Haditha, where she grew up. Inside the back bedroom, a colourful bedspread covers the bed where her family was shot.
This is where she hid with her five siblings, mum and aunt when US marines stormed into their home and opened fire, killing everyone apart from Safa, on 19 November 2005. Her dad was also shot dead when he opened the front door.
Now, 20 years on, a BBC Eye investigation has uncovered evidence that implicates two marines, who were never brought to trial, in the killing of Safa’s family, according to a forensic expert.
The evidence – mainly statements and testimony given in the aftermath of the killings – raises doubts about the American investigation into what happened that day, and poses significant questions over how US armed forces are held to account.
The killing of Safa’s family was part of what became known as the Haditha massacre, when US marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians, including four women and six children. They entered three homes killing nearly everyone inside, as well as a driver and four students in a car, who were on their way to college.
The incident triggered the longest US war crimes investigation of the Iraq war, but no-one was convicted of the killings.
