WASHINGTON, July 28: A US sergeant has described the allegedly deliberate murder of three Iraqi prisoners and its cover-up by his squad, and how his squad leader threatened to kill anyone who talked, The New York Times said on Friday.

A sworn statement on June 15 by Sgt. Lemuel Lemus contradicted his earlier account of a May 9 raid on a suspected guerilla compound near Samarra that ended with the death of three Iraqi prisoners during an attempted escape.

The New York Times obtained a copy of Sgt Lemus’s statement that will be included at an Article 32 hearing — the military’s equivalent of a grand jury hearing — on Tuesday in Iraq for four US soldiers charged with premeditated murder in the case.

Sgt Lemus said that, under orders from their squad leader, three of his comrades shot dead three Iraqi prisoners they had captured and handcuffed during the raid, making up a story that they had broken free and punched and stabbed two guards before running off.

Lemus said squad leader Sgt. Raymond Girouard even went to the extreme of cutting one of his subordinates to lend more reality to the claims, and later threatened to find and kill anybody who talked once he got out of jail.

The daily said it was not clear who eventually went to authorities with the confession after two initial investigations of the killings found no wrongdoing.

Lemus said he did not take part in the shootings, having walked out of the compound after Girouard ordered him and his team members to huddle and ‘talked with his hands’, making it clear he wanted to kill the prisoners.

Lemus said he heard shots and saw the detainees running and falling to the ground, and that his comrades later told him what happened.

When asked by investigators, Lemus said he did not stop the murders due to “peer pressure”, loyalty to the squad and because he feared being branded a coward.

He has not been charged in the case.

While the May 9 incident is one of several murder and abuse cases brought against the US military in Iraq, the newspaper said Lemus’ account “provides an extraordinary window into the pressures American soldiers face in Iraq”. —AFP