The New Yorker explores what happened in Haditha, Iraq, nearly two decades ago

On November 19, 2005, a small group of U.S. Marines killed twenty-four civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them would become one of the most high-profile war-crime prosecutions in American history, and then it would all fall apart. The New Yorker investigative podcast examines what happened that day in Haditha — and why no one was held accountable. It looked at the case of Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt accused in the deaths of three Iraqi brothers in November 2005. Charges by the Marine Corps against him were eventually dropped. 

The podcast discussed the testimony and cross-examination of eyewitnesses to the attack. One expert witness who trained the Marine Corps in Iraqi culture questioned the credibility of the witnesses saying they might not have been as truthful when speaking with non-Muslims and that while they gave sworn statements, the witnesses did not swear an oath on the Koran. That expert also questioned the value of the testimony of Iraqi women. He said that in Muslim society traditionally, the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man and suggested the eyewitness version was less significant.

The New Yorker contacted two outside experts to review the expert testimony: Haider Ala Hamoudi, dean of the University of Cincinnati College of Law, and Mohamed Fadel, law professor at the University of Toronto. Both say the legal concept this expert used was essentially an arcane provision in Islamic law dating back to medieval times and typically applied to contracts and completely inapplicable in the court context.

“It borders on the outrageous,” Hamoudi told The New Yorker podcast. 

The full segment of the New Yorker podcast can be found online. (segment with Dr. Hamoudi starts at 10:36 and continues until 11:16.)

Dean Hamoudi is an expert in Islamic law.

In addition to his role at UC Law, Dean Hamoudi is the editor-in-chief of the Arab Law Quarterly, a position he has held since 2018. His scholarship focuses on Middle Eastern and Islamic law. As concerns Islamic law, and specifically Islamic finance, where he has done much of his writing, his approach has been to focus on the manner in which modern legal actors, with their own pre existing political, social, economic and ideological dispositions, interpret and apply Islamic law as part of the positive law of contemporary states.

Hamoudi has authored numerous articles and book chapters in a wide variety of law school journals, university presses and other scholarly venues; he also has co-authored a casebook on Islamic law titled “Islamic Law in Modern Courts” and “Islamic Law in a Nutshell” with West Publishing. As a result of his work, he has become internationally recognized as a leading scholar in the field.

Learn more about UC Law Dean Haider Ala Hamoudi online.