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Pressure grows over US killing of
journalists
By Ian Urbina
On
April 8, two journalists were killed in Baghdad. By this
date, only weeks into the conflict, the death toll for
journalists in Iraq was an alarming 10, more than double
the total killed in the entirety of the first Gulf War
in 1991. But what was especially worrisome about the
deaths of Ukraine-born Reuters cameraman, Taras
Protsyuk, and Spanish photographer Jose Couso, was that
neither man was near the front lines.
Both were
in their hotels. Alongside roughly 100 other journalists
from virtually every major international news outlet in
the country at the time, Protsyuk and Couso were
recouping in an officially recognized safe zone - the
Palestine Hotel. But an American tank on the opposite
bank of the Tigris River, roughly three-quarters of a
mile away, fired directly at the hotel anyway. The US
military stated that the incident was a regrettable
though unavoidable mistake. However, with the recent
release of an investigation by the New York-based
Committee to Protect Journalists there is new evidence
that the incident was in fact entirely avoidable, and a
Spanish judge is being asked to file formal extradition
charges against the responsible three US military
officers.
The defendants are Lieutenant Colonel
Philip DeCamp, commander of the Fourth Battalion 64th
Armored Regiment of the Third Infantry Division; Captain
Philip Wolford, company commander of the tank unit that
fired on the hotel; and Sergeant Shawn Gibson, the
officer who asked Wolford for permission to fire and
received it.
The Pentagon has claimed that the
tank fire was a purely defensive move. Specifically,
military spokeswoman Victoria Clarke wrote the committee
a week after the event, stating that "coalition forces
were fired upon and acted in self defense by returning
fire". At the time of the incident, US forces were
attempting to find and kill an Iraqi "spotter" who was
believed to be watching American troop movements and
relaying the information back to snipers scattered
throughout the city.
But interviews with more
than a dozen eye-witnesses at the hotel tell a different
story. The unanimous rendition given to the
investigators was that no shots of any sort were fired
from the hotel. Some of the most damning evidence came
in the investigation from Associated Press reporter
Chris Tomlinson, who was embedded with the Fourth
Battalion. Tomlinson was waiting in Baghdad at a
military facility and therefore had access to a military
radio. He followed the entire incident closely,
listening to the full conversations between company
members, as well as between a commander and his
superiors.
While listening to events unfold,
Tomlinson, who served with the army for seven years, was
approached by Colonel David Perkins, the commander of
the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry. Perkins, too,
was following events on the military radio, and he
expressed concern that US tank personnel might decide to
fire on the Palestine Hotel. Perkins decided to ask
Tomlinson to help more clearly identify the hotel so as
to prevent it from being hit. Tomlinson agreed to help
and called the AP office in Doha, Qatar, to find out
what the hotel looked like. Soon after, Tomlinson tried
to relay the message to the journalists in the hotel,
asking them to hang sheets out the windows.
Unfortunately, it was too late. At this very moment, the
tank commander, having seen someone with binoculars at
the hotel, and assuming that this person was the Iraqi
spotter, asked and received permission to fire on the
Palestine Hotel.
Immediately after the hotel was
hit one of the commanding officers, Lieutenant Colonel
Philip, started screaming over the radio. "Who just shot
the Palestinian [sic] Hotel? Did you just fucking shoot
the Palestinian Hotel?" Shortly afterward, Perkins
reiterated the policy that no one was to shoot the hotel
under any circumstances.
One thing that the
recent investigation makes quite clear is that it would
be difficult to mistake the Palestine Hotel. It was
known to all. On the other side of the world, anyone who
watched even five minutes of war coverage knew that
virtually the entire international press corps was
headquartered at this location. The video and reporting
feeds coming from the rooftops and balconies at this
spot were constant. On the facade of the building facing
the tank, the name of the hotel was written in huge
letters. The 14-story building is by far the tallest on
the skyline. There is only one other building nearly as
tall, and it, too, was a militarily off-limits hotel.
With the naked eye, and no help from distance-vision
technology that are standard in most US tanks, the
Palestine Hotel is apparent. Investigators drove this
point home by commissioning a photographer to take
pictures, included in the recent report, from where the
tank fired. The hotel could not be clearer in these
photographs.
After the incident, the Spanish
government called the deaths a tragic error but also
stated that it accepted the official US explanation.
Despite opposition from more than 90 percent of the
Spanish population, the country's Prime Minister, Jose
Aznar, staunchly backed the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Since then Aznar has continued to dismiss the incident
at the Palestine Hotel.
However, the Spanish
judiciary may have something else to say about the
matter now that evidence seems clearly to indicate
avoidable error. In the coming weeks, Spanish
investigative magistrate Guillermo Ruiz de Polanco will
decide whether there are sufficient grounds for a trial.
Under the Geneva Convention, firing on media
facilities is unequivocally illegal. In a court of law,
be it international jurisprudence or otherwise, neither
accident nor the perception of nearby threat stands as
just cause or sufficient excuse for such action. Of
course, American soldiers do not operate under these
concerns. They are exempt from such battle-field
limitations. But for the rest of the world, for which
violations of UN resolutions and breaches of
international law can have dire consequences, pursuing
this case is important. If nothing else, honest
disclosure of wrongdoing and proper procedure in
accordance with law are owed to the family of the
deceased. Washington would likely agree if the tank had
been Iraqi, and the victims American journalists.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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