CAMP PENDLETON — Marine Corps officials on Thursday charged eight Camp Pendleton Marines, including Capt. Lucas McConnell of Napa (far left in photo), in connection with the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha in November 2005 and a subsequent cover-up.

The charges vary by individual, and include accusations of unpremeditated murder, dereliction of duty, false official statements and obstruction of justice. None of the men is incarcerated, and there are no plans at this point to jail them before their trial.

McConnell is charged with a single count of dereliction of duty related to the probes of the Nov. 19, 2005, incident. He is the only one of the eight men charged who faces only a single count.

Four enlisted men were charged with unpremeditated murder and other crimes; four officers face charges for allegedly failing to report or investigate the deaths of the Iraqi civilians after the incident, which happened after a roadside bomb exploded in a convey of Humvees carrying U.S. troops. One of the troops was killed, two others were injured. In the aftermath of the explosion, 24 Iraqis, including woman and children, in nearby homes and a taxi were killed.

The Marine Corps announced Thursday afternoon that it has charged the 26-year-old squad leader, Staff Sgt. Wuterich, with 13 counts of unpremeditated murder, as well as with charges related to soliciting another to commit an offense and making a false official statement.

Unpremeditated murder is the rough equivalent of second-degree murder charges.

The others charged include:

• Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz, 24, was charged with five counts of unpremeditated murder, as well as making a false official statement.

• Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, 25, faces two counts of unpremeditated murder, and one count of negligent homicide (related to the deaths of four victims), and one count of assault.

• Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, 22, is charged with three counts of unpremeditated murder.

• Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani is charged with wrongfully failing to accurately report and investigated a suspected violation of the law of war. The 42-year-old also has two counts of dereliction of duty.

• Capt. Randy Stone is charged with violating a lawful order, in that he allegedly failed to insure accurate reporting. The 34 year old also faces two counts of dereliction of duty.

• First Lt. Andrew Grayson, 25, is charged with dereliction of duty, false officials statements and obstruction of justice.

• McConnell, 31, faces one charge of dereliction of duty.

Attorneys for the some of the men from Kilo Company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment have said for months that the killings were the result of a legitimate action following a massive explosion that killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas of El Paso, Texas.

McConnell’s attorney, Kevin McDermott, has maintained for months that McConnell did nothing wrong and has cooperated in subsequent probes.

On Thursday Les Franco, a longtime football coach at Vintage High, said, “I know Luke, and I think the words ‘dereliction of duty’ are not consistent with his personality whatsoever. I’m surprised the Marines have gone this far with it. For Luke and everyone else who puts their life on the line, it is a shame that it comes to this.”

Bill Blanckenburg, a retired Napa Superior Court Judge and Army veteran who is a friend of the McConnell family, said the charge is “devastating.” Blanckenburg said, “It’s my feeling that people higher up the chain of command have been looking for a scapegoat for their questionable handling of an insurgency war, which is so unlike regular combat war. ...They happened to have picked one of the finest people Napa has ever sent into the military service.”

The Iraqi victims of the Haditha incident included six children and five women, all of whom died inside homes near the site of the bombing.

The accused Marines returned from Iraq in April. They were not taken into custody, but were assigned to tasks at Camp Pendleton as the investigation into what happened in Haditha, a city 125 miles northwest of Baghdad, ran its course.

Neal Puckett, the attorney for Wuterich, said his client “does not think the Marine Corps is abandoning him.” He also said his client, from Meriden, Conn., has no plans to cooperate with prosecutors because “he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Everything he did that day was in an effort to protect his Marines after the IED (improvised explosive device) went off,” Puckett said. “We maintain the tactics used that day were within his right to use.”

Puckett also noted that Wuterich’s wife, Marisol, is in the hospital today, expecting to deliver the couple’s third child.

Gary Myers, attorney for Sharratt, said his client was notified Thursday morning of the charges. Sharratt, Myers said, will not be jailed at this point but he did not know if his client would have other restrictions, such as not being allowed to leave base.

“Our position is now and always has been that these were combat-related deaths,” Myers said.

The Haditha incident spawned two investigations, one looking into whether the Marines had committed war crimes, the other probing the reporting of the incident up the chain of command.

The leveling of murder charges is not a surprise, according to one military legal expert.

“If we want to have a justice system that is taken seriously around the world, then we have to be capable of disciplining our own, of at least trying our own,” said Kathleen Duignan, executive director of the Institute of Military Justice in Washington.

She said the likelihood of any plea deals for any of the men will depend on the strength of the evidence the prosecution has against the men.

Reached by phone in Washington on Thursday, former military attorney and retired West Point Professor Gary Solis said that a lack of forensic evidence will complicate things for the prosecution.

“The lack of a body will make it difficult to prove the cause of death,” Solis said, referring to the fact that U.S. officials were unable to obtain permission from the families of those who died to exhume and conduct autopsies on the bodies of those who were killed in the incident.

He added that while he wouldn’t be surprised to see plea deals worked out between prosecutors and some of the “lesser players” in the case.

Solis said that maximum penalty that the accused could face for unpremeditated murder would be life in prison.

The Haditha case unfolded when the Marine patrol aboard four Humvees was passing through the city about 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 19, 2005.

Several of the Marines there that day have told investigators and the civilian attorneys they have hired have said they were told that minutes after the explosion the men were attacked by insurgents armed with AK-47 assault rifles, shots they said were coming from one or more nearby homes.

The first Iraqis to die were five men who emerged from a car and began running. None of those men have been determined by investigators to be insurgents.

The squad radioed word of the attack to commanders, and over the next few hours stormed through several homes in what they said was a search for their attackers.

The shooting that took place in two of the homes appeared justified, sources close to the case have said, but the assault on a third home may have violated the Marine Corps’ rules of engagement.

Those rules allow a combat operation against any source of fire or suspected insurgent stronghold, but are clear in directing that lethal force not be used against children or apparent civilians unless absolutely necessary.

One week after major elements of the 3rd Battalion returned from Iraq in April, then-1st Marine Division Maj. Gen. Richard Natonksi, announced he was relieving the now-accused Chessani of his post as commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment also known as the “Thundering Third.”

The mix of politics and the military justice system has been a major component in the Haditha story since it was first reported. Anti-war voices point to Haditha as the Iraq war comparison to the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War in which U.S. Army troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese villagers. As in the My Lai case, politicians say the stress faced by U.S. troops in Iraq facing an uniformed enemy in an urban environment is a major factor in what happened at Haditha.

Two months after Time magazine wrote the first story on the Haditha incident, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., in May said the Marines overreacted to the death of Terrazas and, acting in rage, “killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

A leading voice in Congress for repositioning some U.S. troops to Kuwait and bringing the rest home, Murtha’s remarks prompted a firestorm on Capitol Hill and led to a libel lawsuit filed against him by Wuterich. Murtha, a former Marine, has refused an offer to settle the suit by issuing a public apology and it is uncertain if his position as a federal lawmaker shields him from the suit.

In his lawsuit, Wuterich provided the public account from any of the troops there that day about what happened.

In the lawsuit, Wuterich said five men in a taxi that came upon the scene shortly after the bombing were shot when they fled the vehicle and ignored orders in Arabic. The suit said the military’s rules of engagement allowed troops to “shoot suspicious people fleeing a bombing. Therefore in following that policy the Marines opened fire killing the men.”

A short time later, Wuterich’s suit contends, AK-47 shots were heard and Marines saw bullets striking the ground near their position. A four-man team that included Wuterich entered one of the homes, tossed a fragmentation grenade into a room where they heard voices and then fired a series of “clearing shots.” That pattern was repeated in two other homes.

“Any accusation that the Marines ‘executed’ civilians or deliberately targeted noncombatants is either a horrendous misunderstanding or intentional lie,” Wuterich’s suit contends.

Lawyers for other Marines involved in the incident have said Wuterich’s account is consistent with what their clients have told them.

Critics of the case have contended that witnesses at Haditha, located in the heart of the dangerous Anbar province known as the Sunni Triangle and peppered with insurgents, have misled investigators.

The critics also point to the fact that none of the victims have been exhumed for autopsy because of resistance from their families and therefore no concrete forensic evidence of how they died is available.

Earlier news stories had reported that one of the men who would be charged would be 1st Lt. William T. Kallop, the commanding officer of Kilo Company who was the only officer at the scene of the Haditha incident. Kallop was not targeted in the charges filed Thursday.