Clarke Paulus

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Major Clarke Paulus was a United States Marine Corp officer who was briefly in charge of Camp Whitehorse. ^[1]

Paulus was an active duty officer, who had volunteered for service in Iraq just one month after his marriage. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune Paulus was about 35 years old. The troops he commanded at Camp Whitehorse were all reservists.

Several hundred POWs passed through Camp Whitehorse. One of them, Nagem Hatab, died on or around June 5, 2003. Hatab was only in custody for a few days. He was either showing signs of physical distress or faking physical distress. He was unstable on his feet. He had fallen into a bale of razor wire. He had lost control of his bowels, and was covered in excrement. Paulus ordered one of his Marines to haul Hatab to where he could be hosed off. He ordered him to strip him naked, burn his clothes, and tie him to a stake, outside, so his loss of bowel control wouldn't soil the other prisoners.

A medical corpsman examined Hatab at approximately 5pm, and reported to Paulus that Hatab may have suffered a heart attack. Nevertheless Hatab was left outside, naked, as night fell. At midnight Hatab was found dead. A post-mortem found that Hatab had haemorrhaged and suffocated because his hyoid bone had been broken. The hyoid break probably occurred when the Marine Paulus had ordered to hose off Hatab and obeyed Paulus's order to haul him by his neck, so he wouldn't soil his uniform.

According to the Houston Chronicle:

"Lieutenant Colonel Kathleen Ingwersen of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology noted the body had extensive bruising and found seven cracked or fractured ribs. Hatab also had a broken hyoid bone — the free-floating, wishbone-shaped bone supporting the tongue. That, she said, caused him to slowly asphyxiate after he was dragged by the neck to a holding pen. She declared the death a homicide."^[2]

According to the North County Times Ingwersen said Hatab's was not the usual kind of suffocation -- that his death would have spanned hours.^[3]

During Paulus's court martial the presiding judge, Colonel Robert Chester, was highly critical when he learned that key exhibits, including various of Hatab's body parts, were, unaccountably, missing. ^[4] He threatened "extreme measures" if Hatab's body parts could not be located.

The treatment of Hatab’s body did not improve after his death. A U.S. Navy surgeon, Dr. Ray Santos, testified that when Hatab’s body arrived at the morgue: “It kept slipping from my hands so I did drop it several times.” The U.S. Army Medical Examiner, Colonel Kathleen Ingwersen, who performed the autopsy, reportedly acknowledged that Hatab’s body had undergone decomposition because it was stored in an unrefrigerated drawer before the autopsy.

Paulus was found guilty of maltreatment and dereliction of duty and was dismissed from the service. As of January 31, 2006 Paulus was the highest ranking military member judicially punished for detainee abuse.