TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) – The Army dropped murder charges Monday against an officer accused of giving two soldiers in his platoon permission to kill Iraqi civilians.

Second Lt. Erick J. Anderson, 26, of Twinsburg, Ohio, could have gotten life in prison if convicted.

All charges were dropped after an Army investigator who presided over a two-day hearing last month recommended that Anderson not face a court-martial.

Anderson was a platoon leader in an infantry regiment in August 2004. Four men in his 36-member platoon were convicted of murdering unarmed Iraqis during operations near Sadr City.

In statements to Army investigators, two soldiers said Anderson gave them the go-ahead to kill civilians, including in one incident described as a “mercy killing.”

But during last month’s hearing, one of Anderson’s accusers changed his story. Pvt. Michael Williams, of Memphis, Tenn., said he only implicated Anderson to get prosecutors to reduce his own life sentence to 25 years.

Williams said he shot the Iraqi three times before Anderson arrived in the building that was being searched for weapons and insurgents.

A second soldier, Pvt. Johnny Horne Jr., refused to testify unless he was granted immunity from prosecution. Horne had said Anderson gave him permission to kill an Iraqi teenager to “put him out of his misery.”

Horne, of Wilson, N.C., and Pvt. Cardenas Alban, of Inglewood, Calif., were sentenced to one year in prison for shooting the teenager, who was severely wounded.

The case against Anderson is closed and the investigation is over “unless any new significant and substantially credible information comes to light,” said Lt. Col. David Velloney, deputy staff judge advocate at Fort Riley.

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