"Two murders and a lie"
"Two murders and a lie"
Reporters Without Borders has called for the reopening of the enquiry into who was really responsible for the US Army`s "criminal negligence" in shooting at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003 and causing the death of two journalists - Ukrainian cameramen Taras Protsyuk (of Reuters news agency) and Spaniard José Couso (of the Spanish TV station Telecinco).
The call came in a report of the press freedom organisation`s own in-depth investigation of the incident, released January 15 which gathered evidence from journalists in the hotel at the time, from others "embedded" with US Army units and from the US military soldiers and officers directly involved.
The report said US officials at first lied about what happened and then, in an official statement four months later, exonerated the US Army from any mistake or error of judgement. The report provides only some of the truth about the incident, which needs to be further investigated to establish exactly who was responsible.
Pentagon spokespersons said right from the start that an M1 Abrams tank opened fire on the hotel in legitimate self-defence in response to "enemy fire" coming from the hotel or the area around it. This line was maintained and emphasised at the highest official level in the days that followed.
Sgt. Shawn Gibson, the 3rd Infantry Division (3ID) tank gunner who fired the fatal shot, and his immediate superior, Capt. Philip Wolford, who authorised it, denied they had fired because of shooting from the hotel. They said the 4-64 Armor Company of the 3ID`s 2nd Brigade, which was stationed on the Al-Jumhuriya Bridge soon after US troops entered Baghdad, was in fact seeking to neutralise an Iraqi "spotter" monitoring and reporting on US military activity. Some of this data caused the US Army to change its line slightly in its official report released on 12 August 2003. It did not speak of direct shooting but of an "enemy hunter/killer team" which required a response in legitimate self-defence. This too was a lie - by omission.
By focusing only on the rules of combat, the US authorities have remained silent about the real cause of the tragedy. The Reporters Without Borders investigation found that the soldiers in the field were never told the hotel was full of journalists. The US shelling of the hotel was not a deliberate attack on journalists and the media. It was the result of criminal negligence.
The Reporters Without Borders investigation was carried out by French journalist Jean-Paul Mari, with help from the French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, which Reporters Without Borders warmly thanks.
The full report is available at www.rsf.org and includes photos,
charts and maps.
Extracts:
INTRODUCTION
An explosion shook every floor of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel at 11.59 on the morning of 8 April 2003. US tanks were attacking from the nearby Al-Jumhuriya Bridge, in the city centre. It was Day 21 of the war and Baghdad was falling.
In the hotel corridors, there was panic, shouting and people in pain. In a devastated Room 1503, a cameraman lay face-down on a blood-soaked carpet. One floor down, another journalist was crumpled on a balcony alongside the remains of his camera.
They were given first aid but there was no doctor, no medicine, no surgical equipment and no stretchers. They were moved wrapped in sheets. The first one, Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, died on his way to hospital and the second, cam-eraman José Couso, of the Spanish TV station Telecinco, died on the operating table. Samia Nakhoul, of Reuters, had shrapnel wounds in her head.
Reuters photographer Faleh Kheiber was burned on his face and arms. British TVtechnician Paul Pasquale, also of Reuters, was hit too. Who fired on the hotel, and why?The answer to the first question was clear because the whole incident was filmed.
As to why, no clear answer has yet been given. Just brief statements, lies, deception, arrogance, expressions of regret, condolences and calls for investigation. Efforts to have the initial version accepted while attention turns to new tragedies. Fleeting emotions. Life must go on.
Protsyuk and Couso weren’t famous. They didn’t work for big US newspapers and you couldn’t see them on prime-time TV. We saw the footage they produced without knowing it was theirs. They died. Four months later, a US military investigation was "completed" in a bid to hastily return them to anonymity. This report is dedicated to them.
Jean-Paul Mari
COMMENTS ON THE US ARMY INVESTIGATION
• [On 14 October 2003, Reporters Without Borders formally asked the Pentagon, under the Freedom Of Information Act, to supply it with the results of investigations into three incidents which have still not been sat-isfactorily explained. These were the 8 April bombing of the Baghdad offices of the TV station Al-Jazeera, the attack the same day on the Palestine Hotel and the death of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana in Baghdad on 17 August. The press freedom organisation has still not received a reply.]
• On 12 August, the US Army released the report of its enquiry into the Palestine Hotel shelling (see appendix for full text). Extracts:
"The eighth of April was a day of very intense fighting for A Company, 4-64 Armor. Their immediate mission was to secure an intersection and deny the enemy the use of the Jamurohora Bridge.
"A Company personnel observed what they believed to be a enemy hunter/killer team on the balcony of a room on the upper floors of a large tan colored building. (…) One 120mm tank round was fired at the suspected enemy observer position.
In other words:
Troops were under fire, directed by a "spotter" described as an "enemy hunter/killer team." The tank opened fire, in what was considered a legitimate and proportionate response, and the supposed firing stopped. There was no error. Baghdad was a dangerous place. Some journalists chose to stay there despite repeated warnings. End of investigation.
CONCLUSION
The Reporters Without Borders enquiry shows there was lying, as well as three levels of responsibility.
Supposed legitimate self-defence in response to shooting from the hotel - the excuse offered right from the beginning and re-stated and maintained at the highest level of the US government - was pushed in an effort to dominate the media and political discourse. This first version of events became the official version and was a lie by the authorities.
Despite the evidence, it took four months for the US Army to come up with its report, in which "direct firing" was replaced by an "enemy hunter/killer team" to justify legitimate self-defence. The new explanation is also a lie, by omission.
By focusing debate on technical military problems, the US government ignores (…) Enemy transmissions were being monitored. [They] indicated that A Company was being observed by an enemy spotter who was located across the Tigris River and was directing enemy forces and fires in their direction. (...)the key to the tragedy - that the soldiers in the field were never told that a large number of journalists were in the Palestine Hotel. If they had known, they would never have fired. When they did know, they gave and received instructions and took precautions to ensure the hotel was not fired on again.
The firing of a tank shell at the hotel was not therefore a deliberate attack on journalists or the media.
The Reporters Without Borders investigation shows that responsibility for the death of the two journalists and the wounding of three others is as follows:
- At the lower level, Capt. Philip Wolford, who gave permission for the shell to be fired, and Sgt. Shawn Gibson, who asked for that permission and who fired the shell, are not responsible for the death of the journalists. Whatever the technical issues, or the US tank unit tradition of "shoot first, check after" or the temperament of the officers or the orders that were given, Wolford and Gibson reacted as soldiers in a battle situation but without the means of knowing what they had done.
At the same level, the immediate hierarchy-- Battalion commander Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp and Brigade commander Col. David Perkins - also appear not to blame. Their remarks and reactions and the accounts of embedded journalists indicate that they too had not been properly informed by their own superiors.
- At a higher level, the headquarters of Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division (3ID), bears a heavy responsibility for not providing the necessary information that would have prevented the
death of the journalists. The Division’s command had access to information from the Pentagon, from the Doha base and from the press and TV. It is inconceivable that the massive presence of journalists at the Palestine Hotel for three weeks prior to the shelling, which was known by any TV viewer and by the Pentagon itself, could have passed unnoticed. This presence was never mentioned to the troops on the ground or marked on the maps used by artillery support soldiers. The question is whether this information was withheld deliberately, because of misunderstanding or by criminal negligence.
-At the top level, the US government must bear some of the responsibility. Not just because it is the government and has supreme authority over its army in the field, but also and especially because its top leaders have regularly made statements about the status of war reporters in Iraq that have undermined all media security considerations and set the scene for the tragedy that occurred.
An example was the response of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher at a 28 February press briefing. The Pentagon had just strongly advised the media to pull their journalists out of Baghdad before the fighting began. Asked whether this odd warning was a veiled threat to "non-embedded" reporters, the president’s spokesman said: "If the military says something, I strongly urge all journalists to heed it. It is in your own interests, and your family`s interests. And I mean that."
This line was taken by other US government and military offi-cials. The Army’s 12 August report said Baghdad was "a high intensity combat area and some journalists had elected to remain there despite repeated warnings of the extreme danger of doing so." After the shelling, Pentagon spokesman Gen. Vincent Brooks said: "We don’t know every place a journalist is operating on the battlefield. We know only those journalists that are operating with us."
This amounted to creating two kinds of journalists - those who were "embedded" and so able to report on the fighting while under the protection of US forces and those who were advised to leave the war zone or face being ignored, with allthe risks involved since the US Army was washing its hands of all responsibility.
This discrimination is contrary to the journalistic practice and tradition of a democratic country and indicates an intention to undermine efforts to provide the DIVerse media coverage that is needed of all sides in a war. So it is hardly surprising that the position of the Palestine Hotel was not marked as a "Non Firing Zone" on the soldiers’ maps. Not surprising either, but in this case criminal, that
information about the presence of so many journalists at the hotel was not communicated by the military hierarchy to the tank units that arrived on the Al-Jumhuriya Bridge on the morning of 8 April and fired hundreds of rounds at the other side of the River Tigris. It was one of these shells that killed journalists Taras Protsyuk and José Couso and wounded three others.
RECOMMENDATION
Since the so-called "completed" US Army report on the killing of two journalists at the Palestine Hotel is not in fact complete, Reporters Without Borders demands the reopening of the enquiry to answer the real questions raised by their deaths.
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