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<font size=3><br><br>
</font><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=3>Pictures of wounded men
being shot censored by TV <br><br>
</font>Robert Fisk – The Independent May 6, 2004 <br><br>
The pictures are appalling, the words devastating. As a wounded Iraqi
<br>
crawls from beneath a burning truck, an American helicopter pilot <br>
tells his commander that one of three men has survived his night air
<br>
attack.. "Someone wounded,'' the pilot cries. Then he received the
<br>
reply: "Hit him, hit the truck and him.'' As the helicopter's gun
<br>
camera captures the scene on video, the pilot fires a 30mm gun at the
<br>
wounded man, vaporising him in a second. <br><br>
British and most European television stations censored the tape off
<br>
the air last night on the grounds that the pictures were too terrible
<br>
to show. But deliberately shooting a wounded man is a war crime under
<br>
the Geneva Convention and this extraordinary film of US air crews in
<br>
action over Iraq is likely to create yet another international <br>
outcry. <br><br>
American and British personnel have been trying for weeks to persuade
<br>
Western television stations to show video of the attack. Despite the
<br>
efforts of reporters in Baghdad and New York, most television <br>
controllers preferred to hide the evidence from viewers. Only Canal
<br>
Plus in France, ABC television in the United States and the Canadian
<br>
Broadcasting Corporation have so far had the courage to show the <br>
shocking footage. UK military personnel in the Gulf region have <br>
confirmed that the tape is genuine. <br><br>
The camera, mounted beside the 30mm cannon of a US Apache helicopter
<br>
on patrol over central Iraq on 1 December, first picks up movement on
<br>
a country road, apparently several hundred metres from an American <br>
military checkpoint. A lorry and a smaller vehicle, probably a pick-
<br>
up, come into view and a man – apparently unaware of the hovering <br>
helicopter – is seen moving to a field on the left of the screen. He
<br>
is carrying what seems to be a tube with a covering; it may be a <br>
rocket-propelled grenade. One of the two helicopter pilots is heard
<br>
to say: “Big truck over here. He’s having a little powwow”. The <br>
driver of the pick-up looks around, reaches into the vehicle, takes
<br>
out the tube shaped object and runs from the road into the field. He
<br>
drops the object and returns to the truck. The pilot then radios: “I
<br>
got a guy running, throwing a weapon..” Another pilot, or a ground <br>
controller, instructs him: “Engage – smoke him”. <br><br>
At this point, a tractor arrives close to where the man from the <br>
lorry dropped the object in the field. One of the Iraqis approaches
<br>
the tractor driver. The Apache pilot opens fire with his 30mm cannon,
<br>
killing first the Iraqi in the field and then the tractor driver. The
<br>
camera registers the bullets hitting the first man. All that is left
<br>
is a smudge on the ground. <br><br>
The pilot then turns his attention to the large truck, opens fire and
<br>
waits to see if he has hit the last of the three men. The third man
<br>
is seen crawling, obviously badly wounded, from his cover beneath the
<br>
blazing truck. The pilot reports: “Wait. Someone wounded by the <br>
truck”. An officer replies: “Hit him. Hit the truck and him”. <br><br>
The video shows that the incident took four minutes, during which the
<br>
two helicopter pilots – whose names are listed as Nager and Alioto –
<br>
expended 300 high-velocity cannon rounds at their targets. The tape
<br>
shows that the first 15 rounds missed the men. One of the pilots <br>
says: “F***, switching to range auto.” The tape then documents the <br>
firing of four bursts of 20 rounds each at the three men. <br><br>
The pictures, apparently taken through thermal-imaging cameras, leave
<br>
no doubt that the pilot knew his third victim was wounded and <br>
crawling along the ground – and that whoever gave him the order to <br>
hit him also knew this. <br><br>
Coming only days after the appalling photographs of Iraqis being <br>
tortured and humiliated by US troops at Abu Ghraib prison near <br>
Baghdad, the new pictures can only further inflame Arab opinion <br>
throughout the Middle East. It is common Israeli practice to kill <br>
wounded enemies from the air; a devastating helicopter assault by <br>
Israel on a Hizbollah training camp in Lebanon 10 years ago was <br>
accompanied by a series of attacks in which pilots sought out wounded
<br>
guerrillas as they hid behind rocks in the Bekaa Valley and then <br>
fired at them. <br><br>
The film, while it shows men acting in a suspicious manner, does not
<br>
prove they were handling weapons. The occupation authorities in <br>
Baghdad chose to keep the incident secret when it occurred in <br>
December. Watching the video images, it is easy to understand why.
<br><br>
<br>
<br>
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