VILSECK (Germany) - US MASTER Sergeant John E Hatley pleaded not guilty Monday to murder charges that included what a prosecutor has termed the 'execution-style' shootings of prisoners in Iraq.

Hatley, 40, is accused of five counts of premeditated murder, one count of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder and one count of obstruction of justice according to an army charge sheet. He stands accused of killings in two separate events.

Hatley's civilian lawyer David Court entered the plea before a court martial judge, Colonel Jeffrey Nance, at the Rose Barracks Courthouse, near the southern German town of Vilseck. The sergeant currently serves with the 172nd Infantry Brigade in Germany.

Court told an eight-man panel of four senior sergeants and four commissioned officers that 'Hatley was a Joe's first sergeant,' an army term for one that soldiers looked up to and who looked after his men.

He is the most senior of three US non-commissioned officers to be tried for killing four detainees who prosecutors and two soldiers previously convicted over the killings have said were bound, blindfolded and shot in the head.

Hatley is also accused of the separate killing of a prisoner on or about January 3, 2007. The four subsequent murders were allegedly committed in March or April 2007 in or near southwest Baghdad.

An exact date and location have not been determined in that case, and the bodies, which witnesses said were dumped into a canal, have never been found.

Court told the panel that prosecutors would produce 'no evidence, just assumption based on testimony,' including that of two other sergeants convicted of taking part in the killings.

They were expected to testify that Hatley shot two prisoners in the back of the head with a nine-millimetre pistol, but the defence lawyer said there was no hard evidence 'that they died as a result of the shooting.'

The soldiers - Sergeant Michael Leahy, a medic, and Sergeant First Class Joseph P Mayo - have been convicted and sentenced to life and 35 years in prison, respectively, with the possibility of parole. -- AFP