FOR THE RECORD: Reporters Without Borders on Protsyuk case (01/25/04)

FOR THE RECORD: Reporters Without Borders on Protsyuk case

Following is the text of a report issued by Reporters Without Borders. (The report is available at http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=904)

Reporters Without Borders on January 15 called for the reopening of the inquiry into who was really responsible for the U.S. Army's "criminal negligence" in shooting at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on April 8, 2003, and causing the death of two journalists: Ukrainian cameramen Taras Protsyuk of the Reuters news agency and Spaniard José Couso of the Spanish TV station Telecinco.

The call came in a report of the press freedom organization's own in-depth investigation of the incident, which gathered evidence from journalists in the hotel at the time, from others "embedded" with U.S. Army units and from the U.S. soldiers and officers directly involved.

The report said U.S. officials at first lied about what happened and then, in an official statement four months later, exonerated the U.S. 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-defense 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 authorized 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 U.S. troops entered Baghdad, was in fact seeking to neutralize an Iraqi "spotter" monitoring and reporting on U.S. military activity. Some of this data caused the U.S. Army to change its line slightly in its official report released on August 12, 2003. It did not speak of direct shooting but of an "enemy hunter/killer team" that required a response in legitimate self-defense. This too was a lie - by omission.

By focusing only on the rules of combat, the U.S. 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 U.S. shelling of the hotel was not a deliberate attack on journalists and the media. It was the result of criminal negligence.

At the bottom level, Capt. Wolford and Sgt. Gibson reacted as soldiers in a battle situation. They directly caused the death of the journalists and wounded three others, but should not really be held responsible because they did not have information that would have made them aware of the consequences of firing at the hotel.

Their immediate superiors - battalion commander Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp and brigade commander Col. David Perkins - also appear not to be blame worthy. Their reactions and the accounts of embedded journalists indicate they, too, had not been properly informed by their own superiors.

At a higher level, the headquarters of 3ID commander Gen. Buford Blount bears a heavy responsibility. The division's command had access to information from the Pentagon, from the U.S. Central Command Doha base in Qatar and from the media.

It is inconceivable that the massive presence of journalists at the hotel for three weeks prior to the shelling, which was known by any TV viewer and by the Pentagon itself, could have passed unnoticed. Yet this presence was never mentioned to the troops in the field or marked on the maps used by artillery support soldiers. The question is whether this information was withheld deliberately, out of contempt or through negligence.

At the top level, the U.S. 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 because its top leaders several times made false statements about the incident. They also talked regularly about the dangers journalists faced in Iraq.

Then White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stressed on February 28, 2003, the Pentagon's advice to the media to pull their journalists out of Baghdad before the war began. Asked whether this was a veiled threat to "non-embedded" reporters, he 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."

The argument that journalists had been warned of the danger reappeared in the Army's August 12, 2003, report. 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 U.S. forces and those who were advised to leave the war zone or face being ignored.

The Pentagon thereby refused to accept any responsibility for the death of the two journalists.

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.

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Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world, as well as the right to inform the public and to be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Reporters Without Borders has nine national sections - in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok, Istanbul, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and Washington, and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.

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