The Hamdania incident refers to the alleged kidnapping and subsequent murder of an Iraqi man by United States Marines on April 26, 2006, in Al Hamdania, a small village west of Baghdad near Abu Ghraib. An investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service resulted in charges of murder, kidnapping, housebreaking, larceny, Obstruction of Justice and conspiracy associated with the alleged coverup of the incident. They were forced to drop many charges on the defendants. The defendants are seven Marines and a Navy Corpsman. As of February 2007, five of the defendants have negotiated pleas to lesser charges of kidnapping and conspiracy, or less, and have agreed to testify in these trials. Additional Marines from the same battalion faced lesser charges of assault related to the use of physical force during interrogations of suspected insurgents. Those charges were dropped. Unlawful shooting The Iraqi body is still unidentified, but the defense attorneys of the Marines on trial challenged this, stipulating that the victim was actually Hashim Gowad, a suspected insurgent and the cousin of the Marines' intended target, Saleh Gowad. The charges against the Marines were thereafter revised to identify the shooting victim only as "an unknown Iraqi." According to testimony received under various plea agreements, it was alleged that the Marines abducted an Iraqi man, killed him a half-hour later, placed an AK-47 and a shovel next to his body along the road, then falsified the formal report of the incident, asserting he was shot while digging a hole for a roadside bomb. In an interview on ABC television, Congressman John P. Murtha explained "some Marines pulled somebody out of a house, put them next to an IED, fired some AK-47 rounds so they'd have cartridges there. And then tried to cover that up." According to neighbors at around 2:00 AM on the morning of April 26, Marines allegedly pounded on the door of one of the village houses demanding a search. They asked the occupant, an alleged cousin of the victim, if he had any weapons. He had an AK-47 (each family in Iraq is allowed one rifle). They took the rifle and also a shovel resting in front of the house, so he says. At the Iraqi's house in question, the Marines broke into the home while the victim was sleeping and took him from the house, not searching his house afterward. The Marines then bound the man's hands