November 4, 2004- Marine Cpl. Christian Hernandez said he was struggling to move a sick and listless prisoner out of a holding room at the Camp Whitehorse jail in Iraq when he heard an order: "Grab him by the neck."

Hernandez said he paused, positioned himself over the man's head, then took him by the neck and dragged him 15 or so feet to another holding area, where the Iraqi prisoner was later found dead.

The order that prompted Hernandez to drag the man by his neck allegedly came from Maj. Clarke Paulus, who is facing court-martial in connection with brutality charges stemming from the June 2003 death of Nagem Sadoon Hatab.

Paulus had taken command of the cramped, makeshift holding facility outside Nasiriyah less than a week earlier and needed to get the man out of the cell so a high-risk prisoner could be confined.

"We had a rush on. It was one thing after another," Hernandez, a clerk with no special training in handling prisoners, testified during the court-martial proceedings yesterday.

Hernandez said he put one hand under the back of the prisoner's neck and the other under his chin, lifted him a foot and a half off the ground and pulled the man's limp body out of the cell as Paulus and another officer watched. Hernandez said he didn't know which officer gave him the command, but the prosecution said it was Paulus.

The cell was needed to hold an Iraqi sheik whose supporters were supposedly on their way to Camp Whitehorse to free him by force, adding anxiety to the confusion.

Paulus, 35, faces more than four years in prison if convicted of willful dereliction of duty, maltreatment and aggravated assault. He is the second Marine to face court-martial in connection with the death of Hatab, a Baath Party official believed to have taken part in the ambush of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch and other soldiers.

Sgt. Gary Pittman was convicted in September of dereliction of duty and assault, and was sentenced to 60 days' hard labor. Charges have been dismissed against six other Marines, including Martinez, who were at Camp Whitehorse when Hatab died.

Hernandez testified that he stopped after he began dragging Hatab, hoping to get the man to walk by himself.

"I didn't want to hurt the guy," said Hernandez, testifying under a grant of immunity. "I didn't want to break his neck."

He said he tried to get Hatab to stand up, but the prisoner wouldn't or couldn't. Hatab, naked and covered in his own excrement, simply stared up at him and muttered something in Arabic. So Hernandez resumed dragging Hatab, pulling the man's 200-pound body along the dirt floor by his neck.

Hernandez said he stopped a second time and, with help from an interpreter, told Hatab in Arabic to stand up. He didn't, so Hernandez resumed dragging him by the neck.

It was easy to drag Hatab because the prisoner was so sweaty and wet with his own waste that he slid over the sand, Hernandez testified.

Once Hernandez got Hatab to the outside holding pen, he said, he left the prisoner, intending to return with something to cover the man. However, the compound was put under an attack alert and Hernandez never came back.

Hatab was discovered dead hours later. An autopsy determined that he died of either strangulation or asphyxiation, but some of Hatab's body parts disappeared after the autopsy, making further examination impossible.

At the time of Hatab's death, Paulus had been in charge of Camp Whitehorse for about a week. The previous commander, Maj. William Vickers, testified yesterday that members of their New Jersey-based Marine unit, most of them reservists, were reluctantly thrust into the role of jail guards after the Army and other Marine units refused the duty.

Camp Whitehorse was designed as a temporary holding facility where the Marines would interrogate prisoners of war and insurgent Iraqis with a Human Intelligence Exploitation Team. After a brief stay of a day or two, the detainees were either to be released or transferred to a more secure prison, Vickers testified.

But the stays got longer, and Camp Whitehorse was soon pushed a little over its capacity of 25 prisoners, Vickers said. The crowding tested sanitation measures and the resilience of the guards.

It was about this time that Vickers was turning over command to Paulus, an exchange that was highly informal.

"To some degree we discussed the processing of prisoners," Vickers testified. "It was not an explicit, sit-down discussion."

To Vickers' knowledge, Paulus, who had been head of perimeter security at the camp, observed the jail operations for about a day before being given full command.

None of the 30 or so Marines at the camp had received training in how to run a jail before assuming the role of guard. "Not then or even after," Vickers said.

The Camp Whitehorse jail was closed last year.

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