A cannon shot from a US tank killed the Telecinco cameraman and one other from the Reuters company on April 8, 2003, the identical day that US troops entered Baghdad Two a long time later, the Couso household continues their struggle to take a seat on the bench to the perpetrators of the shot, however believes that it has been deserted by all governments The National Court condemned the State in 2020 to compensate the widow and two kids of the Spanish photojournalist with 182,000 and dominated that that they had suffered “omission of diplomatic safety”
Twenty years is a crucial date for reminiscence. The household of Telecinco cameraman José Couso needs to maintain his picture alive between reminiscence and denunciation, which they’ve by no means deserted since they acquired the fateful information of his dying on April 8, 2003. José Couso had beforehand been in Baghdad, however that event was closing. The United States, on the head of a world coalition, had launched the invasion of Iraq two weeks earlier and within the early hours of April 8 its tanks had been on the gates of Saddam Hussein’s authorities district. A Telecinco group, with José Couso within the goal, was there.
After hours of intense trade of fireside, a tank from US Armored Unit 64, calling itself “The Assassins”, turned its cannon and fired on the Palestine Hotel. The projectile hit the balcony of the fifteenth flooring. It killed Taras Protsyuk, a cameraman for the Reuters company, on the spot, and mortally wounded José Couso. Previously, the identical armored unit had fired on the Al Jazeera tv services, hitting its professionals, and had destroyed the Abu Dhabi tv broadcasting gear with a machine gun. The worldwide press understood that day that the US army didn’t need any stay sign to disclose their actions. The sequence of occasions doesn’t appear to depart room for doubt. One after one other, the cameras had been shot down, leaving informational darkness and a path of blood.
The bulk of the worldwide press that adopted the invasion of Iraq was staying on the Palestine Hotel. There had been the media that weren’t “embedded”, those who extra autonomously adopted the course of occasions, with out relying instantly on the directions of the US General Command. The Palestine Hotel was a widely known civilian facility, a gathering level for informants from everywhere in the world in the course of a conflict subject.
When the projectile exploded on the balcony of the fifteenth flooring and killed Protsyuk, a number of Spanish journalists realized that one flooring beneath, on the 14th, José Couso was filming. The photographs of Jon Sistiaga operating to satisfy him and giving him first help are dramatic and historic. Although José Couso arrived on the hospital alive and underwent an emergency operation, he didn’t survive the operation and died to the dismay of his colleagues.
The household retains up their struggle
For their relations, every anniversary the ache is reproduced, reworked twenty years later right into a catharsis with which they intend to realize the reparation that they’ve by no means acquired. Its motto is: José Couso, conflict crime, investigation and justice. But what is key for them, placing these instantly liable for what they contemplate a “public homicide” on the bench, has by no means occurred they usually imagine it can hardly occur.
David Couso, his youthful brother, chats with Miguel Ángel Oliver on this commemorative chapter of “Let’s see if I discovered”, Nius’s video podcast. Like his mom, his brothers and José’s spouse, David finds the position of President José María Aznar ignominious and considers that every one Spanish governments have turned their backs on them and have betrayed them after the authorized reform that restricted the common scope of Spanish justice. In truth, it was the National Court that dominated in 2016 that the occasions constituted an “worldwide crime” and ordered the State in 2020 to compensate his widow and his kids for the “omission of diplomatic safety” they suffered. But it is going to be tough to go additional.
José Couso, a complete skilled
Couso was an affable man, in love along with his occupation, who earlier than coming to tv had earned a dwelling at any job to assist his household get forward after the early dying of his father. His kids haven’t adopted his audiovisual footsteps, however all his family members and his former colleagues proceed to recollect him on the opposite aspect of the lens, caring for every aircraft, making ready the sequences that made him the eyes of the corporate for which he labored. On April 8, 2003, he was decided to document the passage of American tanks over the Tigris River in case one thing distinctive occurred. His digicam was on the balconies of the Palestine Hotel, he behind it, trying straight on the tank that killed him that morning twenty years in the past.
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