Spanish journalist José Couso was killed after a US tank fired a shell at Baghdad’s Palestina hotel, where many foreign journalists were based.

The recent diplomatic cables made public by the whistleblower organisation Wikileaks reveal contacts with US authorities aimed at preventing a trial.

THE HIGHEST authorities of Spain’s judicial system will have to explain to the Congress of Deputies their repeated refusals to bring US soldiers to trial for the 2003 killing of journalist José Couso in Baghdad. Deputy Gaspar Llamazares, parliamentary spokesperson of the United Left coalition, said that lawmakers would continue to demand that attorney general Cándido Conde-Pumpido appear before Congress to explain why the legal proceedings against the three accused soldiers have stalled. “It can’t be left like this. It is a matter of justice and of responsibility to our citizens, which no government body should ignore, much less Congress,” he said.

The pressure on the attorney general’s office, the government and Congress to take action comes from different sectors, including Couso’s family, while the main force of political opposition, the right-wing Popular Party (PP), looks the other way.

The PP’s parliamentary spokesperson, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, has argued that the content of the leaked documents about the killing “has not been confirmed” and therefore her party will abstain from taking a position on the matter. She also suggested that the international community should respond jointly to the 250,000 secret or confidential documents made available online by Wikileaks, and beginning on 28 November were published by five major global newspapers on their websites – including the Spanish daily El País.

Spanish officials collaborated to prevent arrest warrants for US soldiers

PP leader José María Aznar was Spain’s prime minister from 1998 to 2004 and brought the country into the Iraq War, which began in March 2003. He did so despite strong opposition from the majority of the Spanish public and other political parties.

Couso, who was covering the war for the commercial Telecinco TV channel, was killed one month after the US-led invasion. At a press conference, Couso’s family expressed indignation that both the Attorney General’s Office and the government, “rather than defend national sovereignty and investigate what happened, act in the service of a foreign power and then hide the truth.” The family members said they are planning further legal actions.

The commotion has not ceased in Spain since El País began publishing – in digital and print editions – the texts that refer to the Couso case included among the secret US documents released by Wikileaks. According to those documents, the current government supported everything the US embassy in Madrid did to prevent the case against the soldiers from moving forward. Operating a tank, the US soldiers fired shells at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, the known residence of foreign journalists covering the war. Couso was on the balcony of the 14th floor filming the action alongside other colleagues.

In one of the documents, sent in May 2007 to then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, the US ambassador in Madrid, Eduardo Aguirre, assured her that the Spanish government had “helped in the wings” so that the judge’s decisions would face appeal and end the investigation into the reporter’s death. The State Department papers disclosed by Wikileaks, already dubbed “Cablegate”, show that Spanish officials collaborated to prevent international arrest warrants for the US soldiers from being finalised, just as Aguirre had assured his superiors in a cable.

Among those involved, the document mentions Spain’s then-secretary of state for foreign affairs and current presidential secretary-general, Bernardino León, as well as Miguel Ángel Moratinos, who served as Zapatero’s foreign minister from 2004 until October 2010.

In another cable the ambassador sent to the State Department on 14 May 2007, he states, “While we are careful to show our respect for the tragic death of Couso and for the Spanish judicial system, behind the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear” against the US soldiers who fired on the hotel.

Following several starts and stops in the court case, on 30 July, a Spanish judge ordered the arrest and detention of the three US soldiers implicated, but Interpol did not process the arrest warrants and the United States has refused to accept them because the events involved a “military crime” under its own jurisdiction.

TITO DRAGO
IPS
LEHTIKUVA / REUTERS / HO