"Unacceptable" enquiry clears soldiers in killing of two journalists in Palestine Hotel

Reporters Without Borders today rejected a US military enquiry which has reportedly concluded that a tank crew acted in self-defence when it fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April, killing Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian cameraman working for Reuters, and José Couso, a Spanish cameraman with the commercial TV station Telecinquo. The report by US central command was "unacceptable," the organisation said. The details of the findings have not been released, but Agence France-Presse yesterday quoted a US official as saying a summary was sent to the Spanish and Ukrainian governments. "All the facts at our disposal indicate exactly the opposite, that there are no grounds for claiming self-defence, and saying this is a lie," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said. "These findings are the umpteenth US military version of what happened on 8 April and they all contradict each other," he said. "In view of the bad faith of the US military authorities, it is now essential, four months after the tragedy, to form an independent commission of enquiry made up of international experts to shed light on all aspects of this case," Ménard added. Reporters Without Borders has meanwhile been conducting its own investigation in Baghdad and Washington since April, and the findings will be issued at the end of September. The organisation and its judicial arm, the Damocles Network, have also tired in vain to get the allegations of war crimes by the United States referred to the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, which was set up in 1991 under the second additional protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. This commission has never functioned because no cases have been referred to it. For the commission to be able to investigate possible violations of international humanitarian law, the states involved in a conflict must accept the commission's jurisdiction and the United States has never done this.