Media News - Wednesday, May 14, 2008

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

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. Couso's family was expected to appeal the decision, the private news agency Europa Press said. (AP via International Herald Tribune)

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