Support for Spanish criminal proceedings against three US soldiers in cameraman's death

Reporters Without Borders yesterday officially associated itself with the criminal proceedings launched in Spain against the three US soldiers responsible for shelling the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April, killing Spanish cameraman José Couso. "By associating ourselves with these proceedings, we hope to give them more weight," Reporters Without Borders president Fernando Castello said. "The public prosecutor seems reluctant to pursue this case but the jurisdiction of the Spanish courts has been clearly established," he added. Couso's widow and one of his sisters have also associated themselves with the complaint which his brother, David Couso, filed on 27 May claiming that the shelling constituted a "war crime" and "murder." A judge with Spain's main criminal court ruled on 21 October that the case could be heard. The complaint names three soldiers with the 64th armoured regiment of the US army's third infantry division: Sgt Gibson, who fired the shot, Capt. Philip Wolford, the unit's commander, and Lt. Col. Philip de Camp, the regiment's commander, who gave the order to fire. Couso worked for the Spanish commercial TV station Telecinco. Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian cameraman working for the news agency Reuters, was also killed in the same incident, while two other journalists and a technician were wounded. At the time of the shelling, the Palestine Hotel was housing several hundred journalists who had come to cover the war in Iraq. A US army enquiry concluded on 12 August that the tank's crew had followed rules and acted in self-defence. But Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said at the time: "All in the information in our possession indicates the exact opposite of the self-defence theory and to maintain that is a lie."