U.S.: Troops acted within rules in Reuters cameraman case

Sep 22, 2003 | U.S. soldiers acted within the rules on opening fire when they shot and killed a Reuters television cameraman last month while videotaping near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, a U.S. Army officer said Monday.

Mazen Dana, 41, was filming outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad when he was fatally shot Aug. 17 by U.S. soldiers who the military said mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Dana, a Palestinian, was filming a day after a mortar attack in which six prisoners were killed and about 60 were wounded.

Lt. Col. George Krivo, a military spokesman, said an official investigation concluded that "although a regrettable incident," the soldiers "acted within the rules of engagement."

The U.S. Army has never publicly announced those rules, citing security of its soldiers, who face near-daily attack by insurgents opposed to the American military occupation.

Reuters said at the time that Dana's camera showed two U.S. tanks coming toward him. Two shots, apparently from the tanks, rang out and Dana fell to the ground. He was taken by a U.S. Army helicopter to hospital where he died.

Press advocacy groups Reporters Without Borders and the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists had demanded a full investigation into the shooting.

Dana, the father of four, was the 17th journalist and the second Reuters cameraman killed in Iraq since the start of the war on March 20. Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk died April 8 after an American tank fired at the Palestine hotel in Baghdad as U.S. troops took the city.

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