US investigates shooting of Reuters cameraman

[Dover]

US investigates shooting of Reuters cameraman

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon confirmed Sunday that US forces near Baghdad shot and killed an individual later identified as a Reuters reporter in what appeared to be a case of mistaken identity.

Mazen Dana, a Palestinian cameraman for Reuters, was earlier shot and killed while reporting outside the notorious Abu Gharib prison. Witnesses said he was shot by US soldiers.

Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ken McClellan said he did not have further details on the incident, but suggested it was a case of mistaken identity.

“The incident is under investigation. It was not apparent in the beginning that it was a reporter,” McClellan said.

“I don’t know what the circumstances were. Obviously this coalition is not in the business of targeting reporters ... if he was shot there was something mistaking his identity.”...cont'd

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_19-8-2003_pg4_4

[mom cat]

1. He must have looked like "one of them". If they were only

blond with blue eyes we wouldn't make such mistakes! How dare anyone go around Iraq not looking like an American?
What the hell do they mean by mistaken identity anyway? This is outrageous. Did they think he looked like a terrorist because he didn't look like the captain of the person who fired the shot? That is such a lame excuse and excuses nothing!

[babylon_system]

2. "Obviously this coalition is not in the business of targeting reporters "

The US military doesn't target all reporters, the US only targets reporters from Arabic language stations.

http://www.rsf.org/special_iraq_en.php3

Reporters Without Borders said that, despite legitimate security concerns, it was "unacceptable" that the commander of the US forces and other senior US officials in Iraq describe certain news media as "anti-coalition."

Such remarks were dangerous just three weeks after two journalists with Al-Arabiya were killed by US gunfire while on the job, the organisation said. They could be interpreted by troops, who are having a trying time in the field, as meaning that some journalists are enemies and therefore legitimate targets.

[Zorra]

3. I always wondered if there was a connection between Dana, Abu Gharib,

and the death of de Mello in the UN bombing. It almost seemed like Mazen Dana and de Mello were targeted for some reason. I wondered if Mazen Dana gave some film of Abu Gharib to de Mello.

This all happened a while before the Abu Gharib torture scandal broke. But it's probably all just coincidence.

Some of these links might not work anymore; they may be cached at google.

Reuters Cameraman Killed For Filming U.S. Graves: Brother
AL-KHALIL, West Bank, August 19 2003
snip-------
"The U.S. troops killed my brother in cold blood," Nazmi Dana told IslamOnline.net in exclusive statements.

"The U.S. occupation troops shot dead my brother on purpose, although he was wearing his press badge, which was also emblazoned on the car he was driving," he said.

He also recalled that his brother had obtained a prior permit from the U.S. occupation authorities in Iraq to film in the site.

On Sunday, August 17, U.S. troops shot dead the award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming near the U.S.-run Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad.

http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2003-08/19/article08.shtml

Mazen Dana, a 43-year-old journalist, was killed by U.S. soldiers Sunday while working outside Abu Ghraib prison on Baghdad's outskirts after they apparently mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade. His colleague, Nael Shyoukhi, said that shortly before the shooting a U.S. soldier at the prison had granted them permission to film. At least a half-dozen other journalists — cameramen, photographers and reporters — were working nearby, along a barren expanse intersected by a busy highway.

http://www.redding.com/top_stories/world/20030819topworld016.shtml

Mazen Dana Wins International Press Freedom Award

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the National Press Club’s Freedom of Press Committee hosted a press conference Nov. 14 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to introduce three of the four winners of CPJ’s 2001 awards.

The recipients of the 11th Annual International Press Freedom Awards for courage and independence in reporting the news were: Mazen Dana, a cameraman for Reuters in the West Bank city of Hebron who has been beaten and shot on several occasions while covering clashes between Palestinians and Jewish settlers; Geoff Nyarota, editor of Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper, who has been a relentless critic of President Robert Mugabe and who has been threatened and jailed, and his paper bombed twice; Horacio Verbitsky, who has exposed government corruption in Argentina, reporting on past atrocities and battling for the repeal of the country’s restrictive press laws; and Jiang Weiping, a journalist now in jail on charges of “revealing state secrets” after reporting on the taboo subject of official graft in China’s industrial northeast region.

http://www.wrmea.com/archives/janfeb2002/0201088.html

Top UN envoy killed in Baghdad blast
Tuesday, 19 August, 2003

A huge bomb has devastated the Iraq headquarters of the United Nations in Baghdad killing at least 17 people, including top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
snip----
The attack came shortly after the UN increased security measures around its Baghdad building.

The truck containing the bomb was parked just outside de Mello's office when the device went off at about 1640 local time (1240GMT).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3164887.stm

Many at U.N. headquarters were against the Iraq war from the beginning and have become embittered with the United States for limiting the U.N.'s role in post-war Iraq.

The ill-defined U.N. mission in Iraq was authorized to improve the humanitarian situation and assist in reconstruction. The mission's chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was to coordinate with U.S. authorities and Iraqis. Vieira de Mello, who was hosting a meeting in his office when a suicide truck bomb exploded outside the compound, was killed.

Hailed as a possible future leader for the organization, his loss comes at a time when U.N. morale is low. Longstanding relations between key global players that were damaged by pre-war diplomatic wrangling have not fully recovered.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3047965,00.html

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Sergio Vieira de Mello, 55, the handsome, seasoned U.N. diplomat who was killed in Tuesday's bombing in Iraq, had a resume that read like a road map of the world's trouble spots.

In his last interview, published in Monday's editions of the Brazilian daily newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo, Vieira de Mello warned that the vast U.S. military presence in Iraq was inciting attacks like the one that took his life a day later.

"This must be one of the most humiliating periods in history for these people. Who would like to see their country occupied? I wouldn't want to see foreign tanks in Copacabana," Vieira de Mello said. He added that American-led coalition forces needed to win over Iraqis by restoring essential services rather than dominating the country.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/6570481.htm

"We have been in Iraq for 12 years and we have never been attacked," Annan said. He said now the United Nations would reevaluate its security measures.

Unlike U.S. occupation forces, the United Nations had been welcomed by many Iraqis.

Bremer said the bombing may have specifically targeted Vieira de Mello, who headed the United Nations' operations in the country. The truck bomb was positioned "quite clearly pretty much in front of de Mello's office, at the back of the U.N. headquarters' building. So it's possible he was, in fact, targeted," Bremer told CNN.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=1&u=/ap/20030820/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

It would have been especially busy at the time of the blast because a press conference was taking place.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3164887.stm

NEW YORK — U.N. and U.S. officials traded charges yesterday over who was responsible for providing security around the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, where senior U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and at least 19 others were killed in a truck-bomb blast.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard, who was clearly emotional while briefing reporters in New York, laid the blame for the security breakdown squarely on the United States and its allies in the coalition force occupying Iraq.

"We are entirely in their hands," Mr. Eckhard said. "The security of everyone in Iraq — Iraqis, the nongovernmental humanitarian workers, the U.N. relief workers — everyone is dependent on the coalition for their security in Iraq."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030819-113754-2567r.htm

[Snazzy]

5. About same time the LAT reporter died

just after doing a story on the prison and while visiting the CPA.

They called it "an apparent heart-attack."

Edit: Mark Fineman, about a month or so after Dana:

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-me-fineman24sep24.story

The story he did on the prison is in the sidebar but is no longer available. I remember it mentioning how the guards would fire blind into an adjacent town.

[struggle4progress]

10. UN's failure is America's fault

It wasn't last year's bomb, but American policy that destroyed the UN's hopes in Iraq
By Salim Lone
THE GUARDIAN , New York
Tuesday, Aug 24, 2004,Page 9

<snip>
The low point came at the end of July last year, when, astonishingly, the US blocked the creation of a fully fledged UN mission in Iraq. Sergio believed that this mission was vital and had thought the CPA also supported it. Clearly, the Bush administration had eagerly sought a UN presence in occupied Iraq as a legitimizing factor, rather than as a partner that could mediate the occupation's early end, which we knew was essential to averting a major conflagration.

Sergio had nevertheless continued to squeeze whatever mileage he could from what he called the "constructive ambiguity" of a terrible postwar security council resolution; one that sent UN staff into the Iraqi cauldron without giving them even a minimal level of independence or authority. It is not an exaggeration to say that it was this resolution that rang the death knell for the UN in Iraq.
<snip>

But by mid-August, a restless and discouraged Sergio had begun to breach the protocol. Two days before the bombing, he told a Brazilian journalist that Iraqis felt humiliated by the occupation, asking him how Brazilians would feel if foreign tanks were patrolling Rio de Janeiro. And on the day of the bombing, Sergio was going to issue a statement criticizing the killing by US soldiers of the Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana as he filmed an incident outside Abu Ghraib prison.

That statement saved my life. Sergio asked me to add additional information about other unlawful killings, which made me miss the 4pm meeting that was the target of that attack. Six of the seven participants were killed, and the seventh lost both legs and an arm.
<snip>

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/08/24/2003200035

[Snazzy]

4. This is from a year ago

Aug 18, '03

http://www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6987558%255E1702,00.html

Not that it doesn't deserve some actual scrutiny one day and in light on what was going on at the prison when he was shot too.

Reuters memorial page for Dana:

http://about.reuters.com/aboutus/editorial/mazendana/

[hang a left]

7. OK now I remember.

ANd I think that investigation was completed already and found that the US were not at fault. His camera looked like an automatic weapon and he had been warned before he was shot or something like that.

[hang a left]

6. I have real HIGH hopes they'll get to the bottom of this.

:eyes:

[Zan_of_Texas]

8. Coalition forces have actually fired deliberately upon known

locations where journalists were. Not just that time. (Some think he had shot footage of mass burials.)

They fired once - perhaps twice - on the location of al Jazeera.

That was during the main fighting. AJ had sent their coordinates of their office to the Pentagon to make sure the Pentagon knew where their office was, so they WOULDN'T be bombed. At least one journalist there died.

Also, bazooka or shoulder fired missile US soldiers fired upon the main hotel in Baghdad where journalists stay -- the journalists were standing on balcony and saw it -- they couldn't believe it. The US military said they would investigate, and came up with some totally lame non-excuse.

de Mello was a rising star in the UN, and Kofi A. relied heavily upon him.

Somebody had to get past checkpoints to do that one. My opinion -- it was our side. Too much inside info as to his location, and how to get past checkpoints. Our boys didn't want stability, didn't want accountability, didn't want anyone in there defending fairness or neutrality or the people of Iraq. And, they sure as hell don't appreciate the UN, want it to be weak, so they can run rampant in their delusions of empire.

Just my opinion.

[peekaloo]

9. He told his brother he had seen U.S. troops burying their own in mass

graves or at least bodies wearing U.S. uniforms. I believe this was not long after an uprising at the prison.

Whatever became of the film?

:tinfoilhat: