Bombing of journalists "may have been a war crime"

Reporters Without Borders calls for an impartial, objective and independent enquiry by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission. It said the "unsatisfactory" explanations given by US officials for attacks on journalists in Baghdad this week underlined the need for the Commission to look into such violations of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of civilians in wartime. "We asked you on 1 April to investigate the bombing of Iraqi TV headquarters but we received no reply," said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard in a letter to the Commission's president, Sir Kenneth Keith. "We are now approaching you again to urge you to carry out your duty to investigate these attacks and others on journalists and media covering the war in Iraq. Attacks on civilians, which include journalists, and on civilian property are war crimes and serious violations of the Geneva Conventions," he said. "The neighbouring Baghdad offices of the Arab TV stations Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, as well as the Palestine Hotel - both known to US forces as places where journalists were living and working - were attacked deliberately and without warning by US forces on 8 April, killing three journalists. "The bombing of the TV station offices could not have been an error.  Al-Jazeera has told US forces where all its offices in Iraq are and has hung large banners outside them marked "TV." "US officials said a US tank fired on the Palestine Hotel because rockets were being fired from it.  None of the journalists there saw any such thing and said that in fact things were very quiet in the area when the tank took several minutes to adjust its gun and then fired.  Film by the French TV station France 3 confirmed this version of events. "These conflicting versions require an impartial, objective and independent enquiry by the Commission you head," Ménard told Sir Keith. "These events are too serious to be left solely in the hands of an investigation by US officials, who have already refused to give any details about the killing of a British TV journalist under British-US gunfire in Basra on 22 March and the disappearance of two of his colleagues caught in the incident." US Col. David Perkins, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, said yesterday US troops had now been told not to fire on the hotel, even if shots came from it. A spokesman for the Spanish defence ministry (one of the dead journalists was Spanish) said US-British forces had declared the hotel a military target on 6 April on grounds that Iraqi leaders were meeting there. He said US-British forces had told journalists at the hotel about this. No media or journalist appears to have been warned of the attack, contrary to the obligation set out in the Geneva Conventions to give due and effective warning. The International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission was set up in 1991 (based in Bern, Switzerland) under the First Additional Protocol of the Geneva Conventions and has the job of investigating any alleged serious violation of international humanitarian law. To date it has received no cases to investigate. To have jurisdiction, it has to be petitioned by one of the parties to a conflict or by one of the countries that have recognised its jurisdiction.  To conduct an investigation, all the belligerents must accept its authority.  Among the countries involved in the Iraq war, only Australia and the United Kingdom have formally recognised it, allowing an investigation to go ahead as far as they are concerned. The United States and Iraq have not yet accepted the principle of such an enquiry.