Further fall out from the WikiLeaks video

Here is a link to a post that has the WikiLeaks video and background information.

Some new reactions to the WikiLeaks video, where a US gunship is shooting at Iraqis in Baghdad in July 2007.  Two Reuter’s employees were among the people killed.  A man who stopped to help the injured was also killed, and his two children were seriously injured, but survived. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists are asking for a full investigation into the shooting shown in the WikiLeaks video, along with an investigation into other shootings of journalists in Iraq by US troops. 

The United States should hold comprehensive, impartial and public inquiries into the deaths of 16 journalists and three media support workers killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, a media lobby group said on Monday.   In a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said thorough investigations into the deaths were needed to ensure lessons were integrated into future military and media training. 

One thing they point out is how the US troops will sometimes mistake a camera for a weapon.  This happened in the WikiLeaks video, but it happened in other situations too.  They are basically interested in learning from this incident, so that these mistakes won’t happen again.

Haifa Zangana, a novelist and former prisoner under the Saddam regime, has something to say about the video. 

She knows the area where it happened, and has relatives that still live nearby.  She played there as a child.  At first, she feels numb watching the video, then she feels deep anger.  She brings up other well known massacres that happened in Iraq since the US invasion.  She ends with this statement:

We seldom hear from people like the Iraqi widow whose husband was shot, who looked me in the eye last summer, and said: "But we didn't invade their country." Unlike this video, the injustice she feels will not fade with time. It is engraved in the collective memory of people, and will be until justice is done.

Well, she is not exactly correct in that last assessment.  Her opinion piece was published on April 10, 2010.   According to an article published on April 26, 2010, the widow of the man who was driving the van (and the mother of the two children injured) has accepted the apology that two US troops wrote to Iraqis concerning this incident.  A post on that apology is here.
 
Widow of Iraqi killed by US troops in video ‘accepts apology’ after letter


The widow of an Iraqi killed in a notorious US helicopter attack yesterday accepted an apology from two of the soldiers involved. The two wrote an open letter after footage of the 2007 incident was leaked on the internet.  Ahlam Abdelhussein Tuman, 33, told The Times that she forgave Ethan McCord and Josh Stieber, who wrote “we acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones”, because Mr McCord had also rescued her children: Duaa, 7, and Sajad, 13.


Since this incident happened in July 2007, the children were younger then.  They have scars on their bodies from the attack.  Their mother said:

“I can accept their apology,” Mrs Tuman said, “because they saved my children and if it were not for them, maybe my two little children would be dead.”

She also commented that the anti-war work the two soldiers are doing is very good work, because she would like the American people to understand what happened here in Iraq.  She states:

“We lost our country and our lives were destroyed.”

She also asked for financial help, since their breadwinner was killed and the children’s medical expenses are running into the thousands of dollars.  The mother and her children had to leave their home and move in with their brother in law.

One of the families of the Reuter’s employees was less forgiving.  The father of Nabil Noor-Eldeen said that he was angry the soldiers did not come forward sooner, and he wanted them to expose the rest of the crimes that happened against the Iraqis.  His words:

If the two wished for forgiveness, he said, “they should expose the rest of the crimes that have happened against the Iraqis, and not wait for another film to ask for apology and forgiveness”.

The other family (of Saeed Chmagh) accepted the apology.  His brother said:

“I thank them for their good feelings,” he said, calling for the two men to testify to “the injustice that happened in front of them” in international courts.

Reuters, at this time, will not comment on whether it will be pursing legal action around the death of their two employees. 

I remember when this incident happened, since I regularly look at the photos coming out of Iraq.  I had seen the work of Nabil Noor-Eldeen.  It was the pictures from the funeral of Saeed Chmagh that really touched me though – he must have been a great man to have been so well loved, especially by his teenage son who was totally distraught by the death of his father.