US marines face court-martial over urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Two senior US Marines face being court-martialled over a controversial video showing them urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan and posing for photographs with the dead militants. The charges against Staff Sergeants Joseph Chamblin and Edward Deptola come a month after three other Marines were sanctioned administratively for their role in the July 27, 2011 incident. The videotape that emerged in January showed four US troops urinating on three bloodied corpses, and one of the men, apparently aware he was being filmed. According to the Telegraph, the Pentagon said that charges against the sergeants concern "violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for their involvement in urinating on deceased Taliban fighters and for posing for unofficial photographs with human casualties." They also were charged with dereliction of duty for a number of other command failures involving younger Marines, the paper said. The actions shown in the footage took place during a counter-insurgency operation in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province in southwestern Afghanistan.