Baghdad: The families of two Reuters
employees killed in a US helicopter attack in the Iraqi
capital Baghdad in 2007 on Thursday demanded justice, saying that
the Americans responsible should stand trial.
"The truth came out and the whole world saw. The
American pilot should be judged by international justice and
we want compensation because the act left
orphans," said Safa Chmagh, whose brother Saeed Chmagh, a
Reuters driver, died.
"He (the pilot) killed unarmed innocent people, among
them a photographer whose camera was very visible. On top of
that when they evacuated the wounded they opened fire again,"
Safa, whose brother was 44 when killed, told agency.
Nameer Nooraddin Hussein, a 22-year-old photographer
with Reuters, was also shot to death.
Graphic footage of the attack, which killed several
other people on the ground and wounded two children, was
published on the Internet by Wikileaks, a website that
publishes information obtained from whistleblowers.
The video included audio conversations between Apache
helicopter pilots and controllers where the US military
identified the men in a Baghdad street in broad daylight as
armed insurgents and asked for permission to open fire.
The footage showed the Reuters men and other Iraqis
gunned down in the Ameen district of Baghdad in a hail of
cannon fire from an Apache helicopter gunner.
PTI
First Published: Thursday, April 08, 2010, 23:21