A warrior faces toughest battle
Hero Leatherneck facing charges he killed 2 Iraqis
By BRIAN KATES
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
New Yorker Ilario Pantano gave up a six-figure salary as a film and
TV producer and left his pregnant wife and 2-year-old son, to serve
in Iraq after the devastating attack on the World Trade Center on
9/11. Pantano, who has been called an oustanding Marine, is now on
trial for his life.
Jill Chapman, who modeled for Robert Mapplethorpe, and Ilario
Pantano, a second lieutenant who served in Iraq, wed in 1999.
Weapons at the ready, 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano (left) and a fellow
soldier stand by a Humvee in Iraq.
Ilario Pantano, a TV and film producer with the company that made
"Sling Blade," was walking past Madison Square Park on Fifth Ave.
when he saw the World Trade Center erupt in flames.
Pantano, a Marine sergeant in the Persian Gulf War 10 years before,
went into "warrior mode" almost immediately, said friend J.R.
McKechnie, who stood by his side that day.
Pantano lived in an apartment on W. 43rd St., next to the FDNY's
Rescue Co. 1, which lost 10 men on 9/11 - three of them ex-Marines.
Several friends also died in the twin towers.
When he came home that terrible night, Pantano's head was shaved.
In a burst of patriotic fury, he had decided to reenlist. He gave
up a six-figure salary and left his pregnant wife and their
2-year-old son in New York while he went to Quantico, Va., for
training as a Marine officer.
Last March, he was shipped to Iraq as a newly minted second
lieutenant. As a platoon leader in Easy Company 2nd Battalion, 2nd
Marines, Pantano survived eight months in the Sunni Triangle,
including the bloody battle for Fallujah.
But now, more than three months after his return to the states, he
is fighting for his life as never before.
The 33-year-old New Yorker faces premeditated murder charges in the
killing of two unarmed Iraqi detainees. If found guilty, he could
be sentenced to death.
The Marine Corps charge sheet paints Pantano as a self-appointed
executioner. Pantano insists he acted in self-defense.
The incident happened last April 15, in a bloody month when the
number of Americans killed in action skyrocketed to 126 from 31 in
March.
Pantano and his men, a Marine sergeant and a Navy hospitalman,
opened fire on a white sedan fleeing a suspected insurgent hideout
in Mahmudiyah, near Baghdad.
Two men were pulled from the disabled car. Initially they were
handcuffed, but Pantano ordered the cuffs removed and told the
suspects to take out the seats to see if there were any hidden
weapons or explosives.
Pantano would later tell investigators that the detainees began
talking to each other in Arabic. In his limited Arabic, he ordered
them to stop. They pivoted toward him, he said, and, fearing they
were attacking, he opened fire.
The charge sheet presents a dramatically different picture.
After ordering the hospitalman to remove the handcuffs from the
detainees, the report says, Pantano told his men "to take up posts
facing away" and then shot both suspects - identified as Hamaady
Kareem and Tahah Ahmead Hanjil - "in the back with an M16A service
rifle."
He then placed the bodies "on display to send a message to the
local people" and placed "a sign stating 'No Better Friend, No
Worse Enemy'" above their corpses.
The slogan is the 1st Marine Division motto, oft-repeated by its
commander, Maj. Gen. James Mattis, one of Pantano's heroes. But
weeks before the incident, Mattis had added an admonition: "First,
do no harm," he said. It was a pointed warning not to engage in
unnecessary bloodshed.
Pantano's defense team maintains the case is based solely on the
allegations of the sergeant at the scene, who did not report it for
two months. They describe the man as "disgruntled" because Pantano
had removed him as a squad leader.
"What you have here is two guys shot in a combat zone with limited
witnesses - Lt. Pantano and the two men who were with him - and
those two did not see what happened at the time of the shooting,"
said Pantano's chief military counsel, Maj. Philip
Stackhouse.
Said Maj. Matthew Morgan, spokesman for the 4th Marine
Expeditionary Brigade: "The Article 32 hearing will reveal why the
prosecution feels there is merit to the case."
The hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury, has been put
off until at least April 25.
"My son will not be a scapegoat or a sacrificial lamb," said Merry
Pantano, a media-savvy literary agent who has mounted a massive
Internet-based public relations campaign on his behalf and formed a
nonprofit corporation to raise money for his cause.
Pantano's family and friends portray him as a superachiever of
virtually unassailable character. Former Gulf War comrades paint
him as a born warrior - not a stone-cold killer.
No one has come forward to contradict that portrait.
As a teen in Hell's Kitchen, Pantano won a scholarship to the tony
Horace Mann School in Riverdale.
Though bright, his grades were spotty.
"He got As and Ds, depending on what interested him," his mother
said. "I couldn't figure out how he could memorize all the parts of
a helicopter but not the parts of German grammar."
Fascinated by the military since boyhood - he celebrated his 16th
birthday by parachuting from an airplane - Pantano enrolled in the
Marine Corps delayed-entry program before his senior year. When
classmates headed to Ivy League schools, Pantano went to boot camp
at Parris Island. He was 17 years old.
At 19, he was in an anti-tank platoon in Desert Storm and later, in
1992 and '93, he was a scout sniper during peacekeeping operations
off the coast of Yugoslavia.
"He was an outstanding Marine and showed very good leadership,"
said Charles Jackson, a Federal Aviation Administration specialist
who served with Pantano in the gulf. "He took care of the people in
his squad like they were his little brothers."
Pantano made sergeant in only three years but, his mother said,
"after the Gulf War he thought the real challenges were in the
corporate world - and Ilario always had to have a challenge."
At 21, he left the military and joined Goldman Sachs as an energy
trader. At night, he went to New York University, earning a degree
in economics in only three years.
Unhappy about working with companies like Enron, Pantano quit and
co-founded an interactive TV consulting company, Filter Media. In
1999, he married Jill Chapman, a one-time model for photographer
Robert Mapplethorpe.
When Filter Media went belly up, Pantano became an executive for
the Shooting Gallery, a film company that produced "Sling Blade"
and "You Can Count on Me."
He later worked for CameraPlanet, a production company where he
oversaw security for reporters Linda Ellerbee and Peter Arnett in
Afghanistan.
"There is never a time that we found him to be anything other than
thoughtful, focused and rigorous," CameraPlanet says of Pantano on
its Web site. "We ... have every expectation that he will be found
not guilty and returned to his family with his reputation
restored."
Despite the seriousness of the allegations, Pantano has never been
jailed. He was relieved as a platoon leader, but he continued to
work as a communications officer in Iraq.
He lives with his wife and children in Wilmington, N.C., near Camp
Lejeune, and until he was released to prepare his defense, he
performed military duties.
For the past month - after a Pakistani Web site posted a picture of
Pantano's face superimposed on a beheading victim - his home has
been surrounded by a cordon of supportive former Marines.
Originally published on March 6, 2005
