The incident involved occurred in 2003, during the Iraq war, when 3 soldiers manned a tank that fired one round into the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad after seeing what they thought was gunfire coming from the hotel. Baghdad was still a war zone at the time. Two civilians were killed. They were journalists.
TIME reports:
On the morning of July 29, [2010] Spain’s National Court announced that it has re-issued an international arrest warrant against three U.S. soldiers it implicates in an attack on Baghdad’s Hotel Palestine, where Rodriguez and Couso, along with dozens of other journalists, were based during the Iraq war.
On April 8, 2003, one day before U.S. troops officially captured Baghdad, a U.S. tank fired a single incendiary shell on the hotel, killing Couso, a cameraman for Spain’s Telecinco television station, and Reuters journalist Taras Protsyuk.
The journalists had stationed themselves within a dangerous war zone. War is Hell, and chaos as well. Sadly, very sadly, mistakes happen in every war. Fighting heroes and innocent civilians die from friendly fire. It is a tragedy but not a crime.
Is it not enough that a soldier risk life and limb on behalf of us all? Must he also risk liberty at the whim of some foreign court?
Bob B
RANDOM THOTS 