Interesting turn of events yesterday in the Fallujah case. This from Newsmax:

A Marine facing charges for killing an insurgent prisoner in Fallujah, Iraq, 3 1/2 years ago has been jailed for refusing to testify against another Marine involved in the incident.

U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson on Wednesday ordered Sgt. Jermaine Nelson to be confined at the federal lockup in Los Angeles after giving him several opportunities to testify.

“It was a beautiful thing to see,” said lawyer Joseph H. Low IV, a former Marine infantryman representing Nelson.

“The prosecutors are attempting to break the bonds formed in combat. Nelson told them he’d rather go to jail than rat out a brother Marine.

“It is coercion pure and simple. The government wants to take these guys and try to make them say what they want them to say. The government doesn’t have a case so they resort to this.”

Nelson, 26, refused to testify against his former squad leader, Sgt. Jose L. Nazario, at a federal grand jury seated in Riverside, Calif., Low said.

Nelson was granted testimonial immunity by federal prosecutors seeking to enhance voluntary manslaughter charges against Nazario to murder. If he had cooperated, Nelson would have been protected from further jeopardy for anything new he revealed in the case, according to Low.

Nazario was indicted by a federal grand jury two weeks after being arrested on Aug. 7, 2007. He is charged under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, passed by Congress in 2000 to allow service members serving overseas to be prosecuted in civilian court for offenses that call for more than one year of imprisonment.

The prosecution wants Nelson to tell the grand jury what happened at Fallujah on Nov. 9, 2004, when his squad encountered four enemy combatants during the opening hours of the bloody month-long battle for the ancient city.

Nelson already faces up to life in prison and a dishonorable discharge for twice confessing without legal counsel that he killed one of the insurgents after being ordered by Nazario to do so.

In his confession, Nelson claimed Nazario received the order to kill the prisoners from an unknown superior over his inter-squad radio.

Keep in mind that the government has no victims, no evidence, and literally NOTHING in this case except the testimony of one Marine who “confessed” twice without an attorney (sound familiar?) and a few statements that don’t match (I’m seeing a pattern here).

There are some amazing developments in these cases right now, and every one of them gives me hope that perhaps the Pendleton 8 case will be rectified once and for all.