Spanish court drop charges against U.S. soldiers in journalist's death in Iraq

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

Spanish court drop charges against U.S. soldiers in journalist's death in Iraq
MADRID, Spain: Spain's National Court said Tuesday it had dropped charges against three U.S. soldiers who opened fire on a Baghdad hotel in 2003, killing a Spanish journalist.

The soldiers had been charged with homicide and a crime against the international community — defined under Spanish law as an indiscriminate or excessive attack against civilians during war time — for the death of TV cameraman Jose Couso, killed when a U.S. tank shell hit the Baghdad hotel where he and other journalists were staying.

A Ukrainian cameraman working for the Reuters news agency, Taras Portsyuk, also died.

Prosecutors argued that the firing of a tank shell was not a crime but an accident of war.

The court agreed, citing insufficient evidence and saying: "The intentional element is missing in the action." It added that it could not be ruled out that the tank had acted in the belief, wrongly or rightly, that there had been enemy fire and, as such, it was an act of war.



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/13/europe/EU-GEN-Spain-Journalist-Death.php

[lumpy]

1. Just another indiscriminate shelling of anything and anyone

in Iraq at that time and up to the future. At the time this happened many people believed it was intentional. We have seen minerets and other non-threating buildings destroyed just for the helluva it.

[buckrogers1965]

2. Three different groups of journalists were attacked inside an hour that morning.

The attacks were intentional.

Non-embedded media was definitely targeted during the entire war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The attack against the Palestine Hotel was deliberate.

Former military intelligence officer, Army Sargent Adrienne Kinne (Ret.) has revealed (Democracy Now - May 13th, 2008) that she saw secret US military documents that listed the Palestine Hotel as a potential target.

Her job was to monitor the communications of the journalists staying at the Palestine Hotel.