[News] Robert Fisk: Pictures of wounded men being shot censored by TV

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Pictures of wounded men being shot censored by TV

Robert Fisk – The Independent May 6, 2004

The pictures are appalling, the words devastating. As a wounded Iraqi
crawls from beneath a burning truck, an American helicopter pilot
tells his commander that one of three men has survived his night air
attack.. "Someone wounded,'' the pilot cries. Then he received the
reply: "Hit him, hit the truck and him.'' As the helicopter's gun
camera captures the scene on video, the pilot fires a 30mm gun at the
wounded man, vaporising him in a second.

British and most European television stations censored the tape off
the air last night on the grounds that the pictures were too terrible
to show. But deliberately shooting a wounded man is a war crime under
the Geneva Convention and this extraordinary film of US air crews in
action over Iraq is likely to create yet another international
outcry.

American and British personnel have been trying for weeks to persuade
Western television stations to show video of the attack. Despite the
efforts of reporters in Baghdad and New York, most television
controllers preferred to hide the evidence from viewers. Only Canal
Plus in France, ABC television in the United States and the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation have so far had the courage to show the
shocking footage. UK military personnel in the Gulf region have
confirmed that the tape is genuine.

The camera, mounted beside the 30mm cannon of a US Apache helicopter
on patrol over central Iraq on 1 December, first picks up movement on
a country road, apparently several hundred metres from an American
military checkpoint. A lorry and a smaller vehicle, probably a pick-
up, come into view and a man – apparently unaware of the hovering
helicopter – is seen moving to a field on the left of the screen. He
is carrying what seems to be a tube with a covering; it may be a
rocket-propelled grenade. One of the two helicopter pilots is heard
to say: “Big truck over here. He’s having a little powwow”. The
driver of the pick-up looks around, reaches into the vehicle, takes
out the tube shaped object and runs from the road into the field. He
drops the object and returns to the truck. The pilot then radios: “I
got a guy running, throwing a weapon..” Another pilot, or a ground
controller, instructs him: “Engage – smoke him”.

At this point, a tractor arrives close to where the man from the
lorry dropped the object in the field. One of the Iraqis approaches
the tractor driver. The Apache pilot opens fire with his 30mm cannon,
killing first the Iraqi in the field and then the tractor driver. The
camera registers the bullets hitting the first man. All that is left
is a smudge on the ground.

The pilot then turns his attention to the large truck, opens fire and
waits to see if he has hit the last of the three men. The third man
is seen crawling, obviously badly wounded, from his cover beneath the
blazing truck. The pilot reports: “Wait. Someone wounded by the
truck”. An officer replies: “Hit him. Hit the truck and him”.

The video shows that the incident took four minutes, during which the
two helicopter pilots – whose names are listed as Nager and Alioto –
expended 300 high-velocity cannon rounds at their targets. The tape
shows that the first 15 rounds missed the men. One of the pilots
says: “F***, switching to range auto.” The tape then documents the
firing of four bursts of 20 rounds each at the three men.

The pictures, apparently taken through thermal-imaging cameras, leave
no doubt that the pilot knew his third victim was wounded and
crawling along the ground – and that whoever gave him the order to
hit him also knew this.

Coming only days after the appalling photographs of Iraqis being
tortured and humiliated by US troops at Abu Ghraib prison near
Baghdad, the new pictures can only further inflame Arab opinion
throughout the Middle East. It is common Israeli practice to kill
wounded enemies from the air; a devastating helicopter assault by
Israel on a Hizbollah training camp in Lebanon 10 years ago was
accompanied by a series of attacks in which pilots sought out wounded
guerrillas as they hid behind rocks in the Bekaa Valley and then
fired at them.

The film, while it shows men acting in a suspicious manner, does not
prove they were handling weapons. The occupation authorities in
Baghdad chose to keep the incident secret when it occurred in
December. Watching the video images, it is easy to understand why.




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