WASHINGTON, June 21: The US military will charge seven Marines and a Navy corpsman with murder and other crimes in the April 26 killing of an Iraqi civilian in a village west of Baghdad, a defence official said on Wednesday.

The charges include murder, kidnapping, conspiracy, making false official statements and larceny, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the charges have not yet been announced.

The incident took place in the town of Hamdania in central Iraq, and is a separate case from the November 19 killing of 24 civilians in Haditha in which other Marines are suspected.

Military criminal investigators examined whether the servicemen fatally shot a 52-year-old disabled Iraqi man in the face, then planted a rifle and a shovel next to his body to make it appear he was a guerilla placing a roadside bomb.

In a development in a separate case, the military said a fourth Army soldier, Spc. Juston Graber, has been charged with premeditated murder in connection with the shooting deaths of three detainees in Iraq on May 9.

The military had said on Monday three other soldiers were charged in the same killings and with threatening to kill a fellow soldier if he told authorities the truth about the case.

All four soldiers face a possible death penalty.

The eight troops have been held in pretrial confinement at the Camp Pendleton prison in California since May 24.

The Marines plan to hold a news conference at Camp Pendleton to announce the charges.

This marks the latest case of misconduct by US troops in Iraq, although military leaders maintain that the vast majority of American troops have conducted themselves honourably.

Joseph Casas, a defence lawyer representing one of the Marines being charged, said his client is innocent and that military investigators used inappropriate methods to obtain statements from the troops in the case.

Casas, who represents Pfc. John Jodka, said the statements were not ‘confessions’, and that he will seek to have the statements suppressed at the trial.

“I can tell you with regard to my client, he was subjected to at least three interrogations, one of which lasted about eight hours without any food, water, restroom breaks, you name it,” Casas said.

“The way that they obtained these statements is something that’s going to be under our magnifying glass throughout this trial,” Casas said.

The military held the eight suspects in ‘maximum’ custody for three weeks, officials at the base said.

They were restrained with handcuffs attached to a leather belt and leg cuffs any time they left their cells.

Authorities slightly loosened the conditions last week to enable them to have no such restraints while inside jail, the base said.

Jane Siegel, another lawyer representing Jodka, said interrogators used ‘strong-arm’ tactics and threats of life imprisonment to elicit statements from the eight men.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, responsible for criminal cases involving Marine and Navy personnel, conducted the investigation of the incident.

The military said in a statement last month that ‘local Iraqis’ brought the incident to the attention of Marine Corps leaders at a meeting on May 1.

The Washington Post has reported the slain man was Hashim Ibrahim Awad Al-Zobaie, and he was known in his village as ‘Hashim the Lame’ because he had a metal bar surgically inserted into one leg several years ago.—Reuters