On April 8, 2003, two weeks after the start of the Iraq war, Spanish cameraman and reporter José Couso was killed by a shell from a US army tank that hit the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. A day earlier, journalist and war correspondent for El Mundo Julio Anguita Parrado was hit by an Iraqi missile against the Americans. Twenty years later and in the middle of the war in Ukraine, there are many doubts that still surround the case at a time when the figure of reporters who cover war conflicts is gaining importance.
Shortly before the start of the invasion at the end of March 2003, Couso, at 37, traveled to the country to cover the events with a team from Informativos Telecinco. Of all those sent, only two remained in Baghdad: Jon Sistiaga as a journalist and José Couso as a cameraman. Both were staying at the Palestine hotel in the Iraqi capital along with the other international journalists. The rest of the team returned to Spain a few days before the start of the bombing.
On April 8, a US tank fired on a hotel, a supposedly prohibited "target." Three were killed, including Couso.
The journalist and writer Jon Sistiaga, his partner at the time at Telecinco, took him as quickly as he could to the hospital in the chaos that reigned and after rescuing him from the rubble of a burning balcony, full of glass. "It's the most brutal moment of my journalistic life," he says.
"I had to make decisions as serious as authorizing her leg to be amputated to try to save her life and in the end it could not be and she died in my arms," laments Sistiaga, who left Baghdad by helicopter for Spain with the body of José, together with Bauluz, who decided to accompany them.
Sistiaga defends the need to clarify who gave the order to shoot, in his opinion, "on purpose" at the hotel to "end the images and the live broadcast of what was to be the fall of Baghdad, the end of the war ". "There was an information 'blackout' and at that moment the city fell and there were no direct witnesses to what was happening," adds the specialist in terrorism and armed conflicts who continues to believe that "there is a reason to continue exploring" and trusts that the leak of confidential information can clear it up at some point.
Since 2019, the relatives have been waiting for the European Court of Human Rights to favorably resolve the appeal they filed against the Constitutional ruling, which endorsed the filing of the case, in which three US soldiers were prosecuted for an alleged crime against the international community.
In 2021, a judge ruled that the State should compensate the family of cameraman José Couso for his murder in Iraq. In that sentence, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Government of José María Aznar did not comply with its obligation of diplomatic protection. The order then determined that the widow should be compensated with about 100,000 euros and her two sons of hers, with 40,000 each.
In addition, the sentence pointed out that the Aznar government did not undertake diplomatic actions or launch an international investigation to clarify the murder, thus accepting as good and sufficient the explanations of the US government of George W. Bush.
On the 22nd, the cameraman's family will gather again in front of the US embassy so that justice is done and the coalition agreement to recover the criteria of universal jurisdiction and prosecute war criminals is fulfilled. Otherwise, David Couso, the cameraman's brother, maintains, "a clear message will be sent where impunity is legitimized and that killing journalists is free."
After all these years, David feels "sadness, pain, anger and helplessness" because there is still no justice for his brother. There isn't one for a colleague —adds Sistiaga— "hard-working, very hard-working, willing, affectionate, a smile with legs", and who, according to what he says, wanted to stay with him to report on the invasion of Iraq, when things "were getting ugly".
Couso's death followed that of Julio Anguita Parrado, son of the former general coordinator of Izquierda Unida. Anguita, one of the 500 journalists who traveled with US troops and wrote stories during the military campaign, died on April 7.
The day he died, Anguita had decided to stay at the base of operations that the US Army had set up near Baghdad before overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime, and not accompany the tanks on a very risky expedition. But what was a prudent decision ended in misfortune because a missile fell in the agricultural warehouse that the Americans had turned into a base, killing him, the German photographer Christian Liebik and two soldiers.
