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This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

Hello and welcome to Global Eye from the BBC World Service,

where we bring you some of the very best of our global investigative

journalism and reportage.

I'm Anna Foster from the Today programme

and this week we're in Iraq,

a country that I've reported from many times

over the last two decades.

In the last few years, Iraq has seen relative calm,

but it's endured terror, chaos and bloodshed

both before and after the invasion

by American and British troops in 2003.

A battle against the Islamic State terror group -

who took over a swathe of the country in 2014 -

only made things harder.

Iraqis have just been to the polls

in the first election since the political crisis in 2021.

Over the next half hour, I'll be looking at just how much

the ghosts of Iraq's violent past

still haunt its political presence.

We'll bring you an Eye Investigation that sheds light on one of

the darkest chapters of America's occupation of Iraq.

With eyewitness testimony and never-before-shown footage,

we reconstruct the anatomy of a war crime -

what really happened in Haditha on November the 19th, 2005.

And as Iraq continues to struggle with chronic power shortages

and soaring temperatures,

we'll meet people finding innovative ways to adapt,

transforming their lives

and providing security for their families.

Life here in Iraq today bears little resemblance to the country

that I first came to back in the late Noughties,

when I joined British forces to report on the troop surge by them

and the Americans to try to crack down on the country's

increasingly violent insurgency.

But now, here in Baghdad, the sound of gunfire

and roadside bombs has given way to the noise of construction.

There are skyscrapers and luxury apartments being built.

And look - the markets here are always busy.

The restaurants are packed with people who travel from miles around.

And although the city still isn't a completely safe place to be,

it has come a long way from the dark days of President Saddam Hussein

and the chaos that followed his downfall.

His dictatorship was defined by rigid control

and widespread repression,

and life here has changed significantly now,

but the path to this point has been fraught with turmoil and peril.

Over the years, Iraq has transitioned from a country

of sectarian violence and instability

into a fragile democracy,

with power shared uneasily across ethnic and sectarian groups.

It's something we see in various countries across the Middle East

and here, that delicate arrangement has brought some stability,

but it's also stifled growth and development,

and for many Iraqis, it's something that has held the country back.

I was most recently here in Baghdad in 2021,

covering the political crisis that was triggered

by the last set of elections.

The mood was volatile, voter turnout was low.

It was a real sign of the widespread public discontent over corruption

and the slow pace of reform.

And despite protesting for change, young people

in particular just didn't believe that it was about to happen.

Then hundreds of Iranian-backed militia members tried to storm

the heavily fortified Green Zone,

which holds the Iraqi parliament.

It all looked like any kind of progress would be hard to achieve,

but after lengthy talks,

the Shi'a politician Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani

emerged as the compromise candidate that every faction

could at least live with,

and another fragile political settlement was born.

Al-Sudani proved to be a relatively popular leader,

bringing stability to the country domestically

and successfully walking the tightrope of maintaining Iraq's

crucial relationships with the US and with Iran.

His political coalition won the most seats in last week's election

and he looks set to form the next government.

The incoming administration will have a full inbox -

reviving an economy that has started to falter

and dealing with rampant official corruption.

And it will have to handle America's continued military presence

in the country.

The last remaining US troops in Iraq were meant to be leaving this year,

but that timetable has now slipped,

leaving visible reminders of the war in a country

that is still scarred by its past.

America's presence here still casts a long shadow

and, more than 20 years after the invasion,

one incident in particular has left enduring questions

about the conduct of some American troops

and about their rules of engagement.

On the 19th of November, 2005,

US Marines killed 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha,

northwest of Baghdad.

Many of them were women and children.

The brutal events of that day led to the longest

and most expensive war crimes investigation

in US military history.

Six Marines were implicated in the killings.

One stood trial, but none served any time in prison.

Now, after a forensic investigation over three years,

BBC Eye can reveal never-before-seen evidence which implicates

two Marines who were never prosecuted for the deaths of the

innocent civilians in Haditha.

Here's their exclusive report.

Iraqis claim the Marines went on a rampage in the town of Haditha

after one of their own men was killed in a roadside bomb attack.

There had never been a case on this scale

that involved the death of 24 Iraqi civilians.

WAILING

I'm trying to remember...

..what happened.

Time, 12:24.

Photography starting on house four.

Checking for defects.

We're going to be here longer than we thought.

I ended up getting sent to Haditha to do a forensic analysis.

We ended up having four sites

where there were killings that were brought into question.

The Marine version of events is

there was an improvised explosive device that was triggered.

It took out the last vehicle in their convoy.

The very lead of the convoy was pulled up almost adjacent to

a vehicle that had several Iraqi males in it.

The Marines said there were some suspicious things about the vehicle.

They shot and killed the men from the car.

That became... Our first scene is roadside.

They also reported receiving gunfire.

There was a house in that direction.

As they moved through the house to secure it,

that resulted in the death of three adult males,

a mother, a child, and others.

They saw who they thought was the gunman leave through the back,

so they followed into house 2.

House 2 is where we end up with the father

being shot by the front door

and then the horrific scene in the back bedroom

where the mother and the children are shot on the bed.

So what we're looking at, at the end of the day, is

that there were 24 deaths at the hands of the Marines in Haditha.

Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich will face a military trial

for leading a Marine squad

that killed 24 Iraqi men, women and children.

Wuterich was one of eight Marines originally charged with murder.

Sometime early in 2006,

I got a phone call

from someone who was seeking an attorney

for Staff Sergeant Wuterich.

I had represented other soldiers and Marines accused of war crimes,

but once you see the photographs

and read the forensic analysis,

anyone who was presented with that information

could never believe that these casualties were unintended.

What happened in here that allowed

two women and five children

to be identified as a threat,

as a target, and to be...

.."mitigated" would be the polite word.

I'll use the word "executed".

It's absolutely certain -

he either heard and/or saw you shooting.

I do not, honest to God,

remember firing in house 1 or 2.

I know I threw a grenade into house 2. Mm-hm.

OK, so you don't remember shooting in the houses at all?

I don't.

We have statements from the Marines

and, in house 2, we have two different versions of events.

Mendoza gives a very elaborate statement of what happens.

They entered the house.

We have Mendoza saying he was going down the hall.

Mendoza clearly states

that the one that was still in the hall was Tatum,

so there's a lot of invocation to Tatum is the one doing the shooting.

In Tatum's statement,

he's following Wuterich into the house.

So, certainly with Tatum,

he places himself in the room,

firing across the head of the bed.

Then we have Wuterich,

and he never makes a statement to NCIS,

but he makes some early statements.

Very simple - "We were there, we cleared the house, we left."

Based on Tatum's statement,

we placed Wuterich in that room, doing that shooting.

Frank seemed to have the worst memory about the events in house 2.

While he remembered making entry to the house,

he couldn't tell us basically anything that happened after that.

So, in 2008, Frank went back to Haditha.

This seemed like perhaps the only way we could get Frank to remember.

When we're talking about a forensic reconstruction,

the Iraqi versions of events doesn't matter,

the Marines' version of events doesn't matter.

It's "what can we physically determine happened

"based upon the physical evidence?"

We have someone

firing from the hallway through the doorway of that room,

which kills the aunt, and she collapses there.

When we look at

Tatum and Mendoza's statement, the aunt is ignored.

She's not mentioned.

So, at that point, we know that

their statements have at least one portion

where they're changing what happened.

We have the shooter immediately moving past her body,

penetrating into the room, turning at the foot of the bed

and beginning to shoot their way across the bed.

At the same time,

we have someone coming in behind them...

..facing the bed from the side

and shooting across the head of the bed.

On one of the victims,

the last to be shot,

she actually appears to be simultaneously shot

by both shooters at the same time.

We knew that we were going to have

to deal with solid evidence

that there were two shooters in that room.

Our job, at that point, became...

..somehow proving

that one of those shooters was not Staff Sergeant Wuterich.

..so it'll be clear on the record when someone reads the transcript.

Any objection by counsel to that procedure? No, sir.

The client may continue. Yes, sir.

Mendoza places himself at that room,

and he places himself opening the door.

So, against his own self-interest,

he places himself as the primary player at that door.

OK. Waited for the doors to open.

This is the first time I've heard this.

Now, he's going eight feet into the room,

which is the shooter position.

And I've never heard this before today.

So, if you were to ask me, "Is this a confession of sorts?"

what I'd say is Mendoza confessed

to everything except for pulling the trigger.

OK.

We had always known that Lance Corporal Tatum,

he admitted in his statement

that he positively identified

a child before he shot that child.

They dismissed the charges.

They never had a trial.

And now suddenly they had

Lance Corporal Tatum on their team as well.

We want to present you some evidence,

most of which will be presented at the court martial.

This is kind of a trial run. You're a focus group.

We did a mock trial. We presented a case not like

we would in a courtroom, but as close as we possibly could.

And they...

..reacted very negatively.

Reduction of rank,

bad conduct discharge and eight years confinement.

With a dishonourable discharge in 15 years.

House 2 is morally corrupt,

and if I thought so,

death penalty.

We understood that our client was in jeopardy,

despite our best case.

Frank could be convicted of homicides.

More now on the conclusion to

the biggest and longest running criminal case against US troops...

Some time into the trial, the main prosecutor,

he just kind of pulled me aside and he said,

"Neal, would your guy be willing to take a plea deal?"

I was preparing to testify.

I stood up, adjusted my necktie and started down the hall,

and they said, "Stop.

"We don't need you."

And then they reached a plea agreement with Frank Wuterich.

If I had taken the stand and testified,

I would have said that the best

explanation was two shooters in that room,

Mendoza leading

and Tatum firing across the head of the bed.

What would it have done for the larger...

..concept of justice?

Nothing, because both Tatum and Mendoza had been given immunity.

So, you've spent a lot of time with Frank.

Do you genuinely believe

that he doesn't remember or he doesn't want to remember?

I don't know.

I don't know what I believe.

You can watch the full film on BBC Two at 11pm

on the 2nd of December and on BBC iPlayer.

There's also a podcast with much more about

the survivors and families in Iraq.

That's No Justice, Just Kills on BBC Sounds.

This week, the BBC World Service

is launching an exciting new commitment to dial up

women's storytelling across our global output.

BBC Global Women will share stories throughout

the year across BBC News

and the BBC World Service and on television,

radio, online and social media every day.

We as students are on the right side of the future.

I'm working as a content creator.

When we stand up for the truth, we protect each other.

And that's how real change begins.

Here in Iraq,

people are really feeling the impact of climate change.

Summer temperatures now reach 50 Celsius

far more regularly than they did just four decades ago.

And when the heat peaks, power cuts often follow,

sometimes lasting for days

and leaving communities struggling to cope.

But even amid these challenges,

people are finding innovative ways to adapt.

The Kulak Solar Village in the Kurdistan region is

the first of its kind in Iraq.

Powered 24 hours a day by electricity from solar panels,

the project has transformed daily life,

especially for local women, who are now able to earn a steady

income and provide greater security for their families.

We came to Kulak Village

because we want to promote sustainability.

We want to create communities where they thrive.

In this village,

we have secured solar panels for all of the houses,

the local mosque, the school.

And that has meant their lives are completely transformed.

Our long-term aim is to replicate this throughout

villages in Iraq and Kurdistan Region.

We want to make sure

that our countryside stays full of life.

We don't want people to leave because they don't have electricity.

Thanks for joining me here in Iraq

for this week's episode of Global Eye.

And we'd really like your feedback on the programme.

So do let us know what you think on social media.

You can use the hashtag...

We'll be back at the same time next week.

Goodbye.