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Sunday, May 18, 2008

Journalists in Baghdad were military target in 2003


A few days ago the Spanish Supreme Court acquitted (did you ever expect otherwise?) the US soldiers involved in the attack against the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad where international press was gathered at the time of US invasion, killing two cameramen: Reuters' Taras Prostyuk and Telecinco' José Couso.

The US soldiers were judged in absence, of course, because, while Washington is very keen of having foreign nationals extradited to the USA, it never extradites its own citizens abroad.

A former US spy, Sgt. Adrienne Kinne, has now revealed to Democracy Now! that the US Army had the hotel among its military targets, in spite of knowing well it was occupied by journalists:

... one thing that gave me grave concern was that as we identified phone numbers, we started to find more and more and more numbers that belonged not to any organizations affiliated with terrorism or with military—with militaries of Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere, but with humanitarian aid organizations, non-governmental organizations, who include the International Red Cross, Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, a whole host of humanitarian aid organizations. And it also included journalists.

...we were listening to journalists who were staying in the Palestine Hotel. And I remember that, specifically because during the buildup to Shock and Awe, which people in my unit were really disturbingly excited about, we were given a list of potential targets in Baghdad, and the Palestine Hotel was listed as a potential target.

...I thought there was something that was going terribly wrong.

The whole interview is available in video and audio format at th link above.

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