By Marty Graham CAMP PENDLETON, July 9 (Reuters) - A U.S. Marine Corps prosecutor asked a jury on Monday to convict a Marine corporal for his role in the killing last year of a 52-year-old Iraqi grandfather in the town of Hamdania. But defense attorneys at the opening of the court martial told the jury that Cpl. Trent Thomas was following orders and should not be convicted in the killing. "Under the circumstances, Corporal Thomas had no alternative but to do what he did," defense lawyer Haytham Faraj said. "Marines in combat don't challenge orders." The killing in Hamdania is one of several incidents involving the deaths of Iraqi civilians that have damaged the image of U.S. troops. Seven Marines are charged in the November 2005 killings of 24 civilians in Haditha, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is probing the shootings of eight insurgents who had surrendered to Marines during the 2004 battle for Fallujah. The charges against Thomas arose from the death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, a disabled police officer who was shot to death on April 26, 2006. According to the testimony of five Marines who have already pleaded guilty and received reduced sentences in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors, the eight-man squad decided to kill a known insurgent named Saleh Gowad. Not able to find Gowad, the Marines snatched Awad from a nearby house, bound him and marched him about a half mile to a bomb crater, where they placed a shovel and a rifle and then killed him in a way that made it look like they'd been in a firefight with a man planting a bomb, according to testimony. Defense lawyers didn't argue that the killing went differently or that Thomas didn't participate. Instead, Faraj said that Thomas and other Marines were following orders in the chaotic atmosphere of war. "Their squad leader gave this order and execute it they did," Faraj told the jury. Prosecutor Lt. Col. John Baker, anticipating the defense, said Awad's death was murder. "It's not an easy thing to sit on a murder case when the murder happened in the middle of a war," Baker said. "This is an old fashioned case of premeditated conspiracy to murder." Thomas is charged with conspiracy, murder, larceny, kidnapping and lying. The 25-year-old father of two young children was joined in court by his wife and mother. If he is convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. Earlier Monday, the lawyers agreed on a panel of six enlisted Marines and three officers to hear the trial, which is expected to last for two weeks.
