Independent Witnesses to War Perish at the Hands of the U.S. Military in Iraq

Independent Witnesses to War Perish

at the Hands of the U.S. Military in Iraq

By Andrew Kennis

May 2003

The figures on journalist fatalities during the invasion of Iraq are quite startling. According to the London-based daily, The Guardian, 12 journalists covering the Iraqi conflict have died. Thus, in relation to the total of American and British military deaths, the journalist fatality count is about 9 percent. Conversely, in the entire Vietnam War which lasted over one and half decades, about 50 journalists died – less than a tenth of one percent of the roughly 58,000 American military dead.

Although the number of journalist fatalities do not even approach the heights of Iraqi civilian deaths (which range between 2200 and 2700 people), the consequences of their deaths can be measured in more than mere loss to human life. In serving the important role as independent witnesses and reporters of the abuses of war, a loss to these ranks and a deterioration in their ability to do their jobs all the more likely translates to a greater amount of civilian deaths. The point in general is not a disputed one as even British foreign minister Jack Straw described the work of journalists in the conflict as being, “imperative if those who take military action are to be held properly to account for their decisions in our democracies.”

More disturbing than the high totals of journalist fatalities, however, is that there were at least two fatal incidents where a considerable amount of evidence points to the attacks having been deliberate. A third incident, when Terry Lloyd of ITV was shot dead by U.S. soldiers in Basra on March 22, also had suspicious circumstances. Although all press cars are prominently marked as being as such, U.S. officials claimed that Lloyd’s car was mistook for an Iraqi vehicle. Lloyd’s crew is still missing.

While Lloyd’s death and his colleague’s disappearances occurred under unclear circumstances, two incidents on April 8 are surrounded by a lot more information and eye-witnesses. On that morning at 7:45am local Baghdad time, a U.S. jet launched a missile that directly hit the building that was home to the Al-Jazeera satellite television network and Abu Dhabi TV, another Arabic language network. About four hours later on the same morning, the Palestine Hotel was attacked by an M1A1 Abrams tank.

Around the same time, the offices of Abu Dhabi TV were shot by artillery fire, which trapped 25 reporters in the basement who were forced to telephone the International Red Cross for help. Incredibly and fortunately, no one was injured or killed in that attack. However, in the case of the Palestine Hotel and the Al-Jazeera network, journalists were indeed killed.

Missile Attack and Tank

Shelling Kill Three

Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian-Palestinian aged 34 years old, was Al-Jazeera’s chief correspondent in Baghdad. He was covering a battle between U.S. and Iraqi troops nearby the bureau from the building’s roof, along with his second cameraman, an Iraqi named Zuheir. A colleague of Ayoub’s, Maher Abdullah, gave an eye-witness account to The Independent – a London-based daily: “The plane was flying so low that those of us downstairs thought it would land on the roof – that’s how close it was. We actually heard the rocket being launched. It was a direct hit – the missile actually exploded against our electrical generator. Tariq died almost at once. Zuheir was injured” (April 9).

The Jamhuriya bridge is located near the building that was hit by the U.S. jet. Shortly before the strike that killed Al-Jazeera’s Ayoub, several U.S. tanks positioned themselves on that bridge. One of the tanks turned its cannon aiming toward the Hotel and shockingly fired at the 15^th floor of the building, exactly where the British based news agency Reuters was basing its operations in Baghdad. Several other hundred reporters were working at the hotel, which the Iraqi authorities had designated as the center of operations for non-embedded journalists.

The tank shelling resulted in the deaths of a Spanish cameraman for the television station Telecinco and a Ukrainian national working as a cameraman for Reuters. The attack also seriously injured three other Reuters journalists, whose blood swamped the cameras and tripods that were left behind in the hotel after the attack in the Reuters makeshift bureau office.

Samia Nakhoul, one of the injured Reuters correspondents, had part of a tank shell imbedded in her brain that was less than an inch away from paralyzing her. Since the day of the bombing up until the present, she has been hospitalized.

Taras Protsyuk, 35, was less fortunate than his colleague and died as a result of the shelling. Protsyuk had covered many other conflicts and war zones for Reuters, including the U.S. air war against Yugoslavia and also its invasion of Afghanistan. Upon arriving in Baghdad, Protsyuk had been quoted as saying that he and his colleagues were going to “cover the war until the last drop of blood is spilled.” Like the late Al-Jazeera chief Iraq correspondent, Tariq Ayoub, Protsyuk also left behind a young child and wife.

José Couso, the Telecinco cameraman, was filming from his room one floor above the Reuters bureau when he was killed. Couso actually survived the attack and had his leg amputated in a desperate attempt to save his life. Thirty minutes after the operation, however, Couso succumbed to his injuries and died. He was 37 years old.

The day following Couso’s death (April 9), the New York Times reported that in Spain, “hundreds of media workers blocked a main road outside the American Embassy, with a phalanx of camera lenses covered up to symbolize what many Spaniards maintain is an American campaign to stop independent coverage from Baghdad.” The Spanish journalists were protesting both the death of Couso and their government’s diplomatic support for the war.

U.S. Official Explanations

While U.S. officials have expressed regret for the incidents on April 8, instead of taking any responsibility for the deaths, they have claimed self-defense. General Buford Blount of the U.S. 3^rd Infantry Division was responsible for the tanks that were on the Jamhuriya bridge and claimed that the shelling was a response to enemy fire, “The tank was receiving fire from the hotel, RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) and small-arms fire, and engaged with one tank round. The firing [consequently] stopped.” Additionally, Ciar Byrne of the Guardian reported that, “the colonel in charge of the tank that fired said they had reacted after seeing enemy ‘binoculars’ being used in the hotel.”

U.S. Central Command, however, had revised its original position after questioning from journalists. Initially, the official stance was that the tank shelling was a response to sniper fire from the lobby of the hotel. After a journalist inquired as to why a response was fired into the 15^th floor of the Palestine Hotel if sniper fire came from the lobby, the position was revised to be that there was merely “significant enemy fire” without any specifics as to where it originated from.

In regards to the missile and artillery attack on the Al-Jazeera building, officials from the U.S. Central Command in Qatar were also short on details and similar to their position on the hotel, merely claimed that that the missile attack was a response to, “significant enemy fire from the building.”

U.S. officials, however, have not claimed that the attacks were an accident, nor could they have, thanks to the fact that Al-Jazeera alerted the U.S. State Department in a letter received well before the war (February 24) of its address and exact latitude / longitude coordinates. Furthermore, and quite surprisingly, a U.S. State Department spokesperson had visited the building the day before it was attacked and reiterated Pentagon assurances that the building would not be attacked (Independent, April 9).

The Palestine Hotel is well-known as the location of nearly all independent journalists who are based in Baghdad and covering the invasion and the Pentagon also never claimed ignorance on this point either.

While no independent eye-witness account verified U.S. claims, military spokesmen remained defiant. “This coalition does not target journalists,” stated U.S. army spokesman Brigadier General Vincent Brooks from Qatar the day following the deaths.

Independent Eye-Witness Accounts

Contradict Official Claims

Immediately after the incidents of April 8, a flood of eye-witness accounts and evidence contradicted U.S. official claims and pointed quite strongly to the possibility that the killings were deliberate.

The only activity that was going on near the building that was attacked by missile and artillery fire in the morning of April 8 were sporadic street battles being pitched between U.S. and Iraqi forces, which provides no explanation as to why the roof of the building was the target of a missile. No eye-witnesses verified U.S. claims that there was enemy-fire from the building that was home to the Al-Jazeera network – whose signal is said to reach an estimated 45 million people – and all first-hand accounts were contrary to the Pentagon position.

In the case of the Palestine Hotel, cameraman Herve de Ploeg, of channel France 3,was actually videotaping the scene. The tape shows a scene of complete silence in the minutes that led up to the attack. Recall that the U.S. position was that the tank fired in direct response to, “rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire.”

The cameraman of the video tape, de Ploeg, also offered testimony that contradicted the U.S. official position. “There was no shooting at all. Then I saw the turret turning in our direction and the carriage lifting.” De Ploeg insisted that, “It was not a case of instinctive firing.”

Other eye-witnesses accounts lend credence to de Ploeg’s assertion and video tape evidence that the shelling of the hotel was not a reaction to anything, as BBC reporter Ragge Omaar said that the tank had aimed its cannon at the hotel for about 20 minutes before actually firing.

Indeed, all of the occupants of the Palestine hotel who offered testimony vehemently insisted that no small-arms fire, much less grenade fire, came from the hotel. “I never heard a single shot coming from any of the area around here, certainly not from the hotel,” David Chater of British Sky TV told Reuters.

Others added that strict precautions were taken against the entry of anybody armed, “the dozens of journalists and crews living there – myself included – have watched like hawks to make sure that no armed men should ever use the hotel as an assault point,” wrote Robert Fisk, veteran Middle East correspondent and on-the-scene Baghdad reporter for the London daily, The Independent.

Wrath of Condemnations Fail to Elicit

Change of Position from Washington

Due to the inordinate amount of evidence against the official U.S. stance on the attacks, a slew of condemnations were issued from a number of advocacy groups and international journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) wrote a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and in referring to the protection that journalists receive under the laws of war, the Committee stated that, “We believe these attacks violate the Geneva Conventions.”

The Vienna-based International Press Institute and its representatives of editors hailing from 115 countries wrote to Rumsfeld as well, and like the CPJ considered the April 8 attacks to be war crimes as, “the IPI has been left with the overwhelming impression that the attack was carried out recklessly and without regard to the potential for civilian casualties.”

The press watchdog group Reporters Without Borders directly accused of the U.S. military deliberately undertaking the attacks and its secretary general, Robert Menard, called on Rumsfeld to produce evidence that contradicted as much.

Despite the wrath of condemnations, however, Washington has stubbornly persisted to its insistence that the incident was legitimately a case of self-defense.

On April 9, the day following the attack, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney stated at a meeting of American newspaper reporters in New Orleans that allegations that the attack was deliberate were “totally false” and added that, “You'd have to be an idiot to believe that.” (New York Times, April 10)

Victoria Clarke, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State of Defense for Public Affairs, indirectly blamed the victims of the attack as she said that Baghdad “is not a safe place; [reporters] should not be there.” (Associated Press, April 9)

Finally, Secretary of State Colin Powell put an end to the matter when he stated that, “According to a US military review of the incident, our forces responded to hostile fire appearing to come from a location later identified as the Palestine Hotel... Our review of the April 8th incident indicates that the use of force was justified” (New York Times, April 28).

Past Behavior and Attitude

Toward Independent Journalists

The recent history of the Pentagon’s treatment of independent reporters and the Al-Jazeera television network is less than admirable, as it has ranged from general hostility to missile attacks.

The Palestine Hotel has been the base for most of the “un-embedded” or independent correspondents covering the invasion and present occupation of Iraq, and the attitude by U.S. and British officials towards such journalists has been less than amiable.

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, for example, refers to independent reporters as being entities sent by to “news organizations eager to get their people unilaterally into Baghdad.” Clarke gives the strong impression then that there is something wrong with the desire to have “unilaterals” as opposed to “embedded reporters.”

British Home Secretary David Blunkett has referred to independent reporters in even harsher terms, describing them as working “behind enemy lines.”

There have been several occurrences reported of U.S. military harassment of non-embedded journalists, including one incident in which two Portuguese and two Israeli journalists were detained, beaten, threatened with death and finally expelled from Iraq.

According to one of the Israeli victims of the incident, Dan Scemama, a Lieutenant heading a platoon of foot soldiers decided that he and his colleagues, “were very dangerous spies for Iraq.” The international press credentials of Scemama and the three other journalists with him were marked “unilateral” as opposed to “embedded.”

Furthermore, there is still the unexplained death of independent journalist Terry Lloyd and the disappearance of several of his colleagues on March 22 (see above).

In the case of the bombing of the Al-Jazeera building, there has been a long history of hostile Pentagon behavior towards a television network whom the Bush administration has openly criticized.

The Al-Jazeera network has been characterized as an outlet that, “practices media freedom to an extent and enthusiasm that rivals and sometimes surpasses its American and British counterparts” (Today, April 9). Long-time Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, has written about how Al-Jazeera “outraged [U.S. officials with it’s] coverage of the civilian victims of US bombing raids.” Time magazine has observed, “On U.S. TV it means press conferences with soldiers who have hand and foot injuries and interviews with POWs' families, but little blood. On Arab and Muslim TV it means dead bodies and mourning.”

With characterizations like these, perhaps it comes as no surprise then that the U.S. and British military has attacked Al-Jazeera installations a number of times in the past. On March 29, British forces fired upon its camera crew in Basra and days later on April 2, also shelled its Basra offices. A car clearly marked as belonging to the Arab television network was shot at by U.S. forces on April 7. (Reporters Without Borders, April 8)

Even before the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military had bombed Al-Jazeera installations. Its Kabul office in Afghanistan was bombed by a U.S. missile during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

In light of this past treatment of Al-Jazeera and independent reporters, doubts are not shed on the capability of the U.S. military to have undertaken a deliberate attack on April 8.

Bleak Outlook

When taken altogether – the April 8 attacks and the U.S. evasion of responsibility, continuing hostility towards independent journalists and Al-Jazeera, as well as the total of journalists who have died during the war – the record of the Anglo-American forces and its treatment of journalists during the invasion of the battered oil-nation has been, at best, shameful and at worst, consisting of deliberately executed war crimes. In either scenario, the implications lend much to be concerned about as Iraqi citizens – much less prospects for peace within the near-future – can only be put at even greater peril.