CAMP PENDLETON - A pretrial hearing for a Navy corpsman accused of joining seven Marines in the alleged kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi man has been rescheduled for Oct. 19, Camp Pendleton officials announced Tuesday.

The request to postpone the hearing, which had been set to begin this morning, came from the team defending Hospitalman 3rd Class Melson Bacos, the Marines said.

Military officials did not say why they asked to delay the hearing, and Bacos' private attorney, Jeremiah Sullivan III of San Diego, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The military's Article 32 hearing is the equivalent of a preliminary hearing in civilian courts. It is designed for the prosecution to lay out its evidence in hopes that it will be considered enough to take the defendant on to court-martial.

The eight men, including Bacos, have been charged with snatching Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his home in the Iraqi village of Hamdania west of Baghdad on April 26, shooting him to death and staging the killing scene to make him appear to have been an insurgent.

Hearings for three of Bacos' co-defendants have taken place within the last few weeks.

Marine officials announced Monday that Lt. Gen. James Mattis has decided that those three men -- Pfc. John Jodka III, Lance Cpl. Jerry Shumate Jr. and Cpl. Marshall Magincalda -- will move on to courts-martial.

The pretrial investigative hearings for the remaining four defendants, Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, Cpl. Trent Thomas, and Lance Cpls. Tyler Jackson and Robert Pennington, are set for the week of Oct. 16.

All of the defendants accused in the Hamdania incident are jailed in the Camp Pendleton brig where they have been held since late May after being ordered to return to the U.S.

The Hamdania killing is one of two unrelated incidents involving Camp Pendleton Marines under scrutiny for possible war crimes. Investigators also are looking into allegations that a separate squad of Marines killed 24 civilians, including children, in the Iraqi town of Haditha shortly after a roadside bomb killed a Marine on Nov. 19.

No charges have been brought in that case; none of the Marines under investigation for the Haditha incident are jailed.

- Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 631-6624 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.