Thirteen years ago this week, whistleblowing website WikiLeaks released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad.
The dead included two Reuters news staff -- Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. After the first round of shooting using a 30mm Cannon, when Namir and several others were killed, a minivan came to rescue Saeed.
The video clearly shows the unprovoked killing of a wounded Saeed, and his rescuers. Two young children in the minivan brought for rescuing Saeed were also seriously wounded.
The US military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed and stated that they did not know how the children were injured. They initially claimed that all the dead were “anti-Iraqi forces” or “insurgents”.
The video was shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight on the morning of July 12, 2007. Although some of the men appear to have been armed, the behaviour of nearly everyone was relaxed.
“There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,” said Lt Col Scotl Bleichwehl, spokesperson for the US forces in Baghdad, according to New York Times.
The US military authorities concluded that the actions of the pilots and soldiers involved were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and their Rules of Engagement.
Reuters demanded an investigation into the killings, and in 2007, used the Freedom of Information Act to request a copy of the video evidence taken from the primary helicopter involved in the attack. But the video was not released. WikiLeaks obtained and decrypted the video and released it on April 5, 2010.
A barbaric act
Saeed was a respected Reuters driver and assistant. He was 40 when he was killed, and is survived by his wife and four children.
Namir, 22, came from a family of journalists and was considered one of the best war photographers in Iraq.
Eight minutes after the attack, the ground troops arrived on the scene. “We pulled up and stopped and I could hear them over the intercom say they couldn't drive the Bradleys (tanks) in because there were too many bodies and didn't want to drive over them,” Army Chaplain Captain James Hall was quoted as saying by Washington Post.
The soldiers found the children in the minivan. The treating soldier eventually decides to evacuate the children to the medical centre at the nearby US base of Rustamiyah, according to the video.
However, higher command orders that the children instead be handed to Iraqi police and taken to an Iraqi hospital.
“No innocent civilians were killed on our part deliberately. We took greater pains to prevent that. I know that two children were hurt, and we did everything we could to help them. I don't know how the children were hurt,” Washington Post quoted Major Brent Cummings, executive officer of 2-16, US Army, as saying.
Consequently, WikiLeaks released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing these rules before, during, and after the killings.
WikiLeaks also released both the original 38-minute video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles were added from the radio transmissions to both versions.
They also obtained the video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers, verified the authenticity of the information and spoke to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident.
In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists who were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on the war. From 2003- 2009, at least 139 journalists were killed in Iraq while doing their work.