On July 27, 2007, US Apache helicopters slaughtered Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several other unarmed men in a public square in Eastern Baghdad.
Wikileaks obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopters showing the slaughter of Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the chopper gunmen shoot and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad.
The unarmed journalists were apparently assumed to be insurgents but after the initial shooting, another unarmed group of adults and children arrives on the scene in a minivan and attempted to transport the wounded. They were fired upon as well by US military gunships.
The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths occurred. Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting documents on April 5th 2010 onhttp://collateralmurder.com but no American troops or commanders responsible for the killing have ever been brought to justice.
, born September 1, 1984, was an Iraqi freelance photojournalist killed, along with his assistant and a number of other Iraqi citizens, by U.S. military forces in the New Baghdad district ofBaghdad, Iraq, during an airstrike on July 12, 2007.
He was one of the first photographers trained by the Reuters news agency as part of a strategy to employ photojournalists with strong local knowledge and access to areas considered too dangerous for Western photographers to work in. Chris Helgren, former Reuters chief photographer who instigated the agency’s plan, called Noor-Eldeen one of the star recruits of the initial recruitment stage, and said, “In Mosul, he started from nothing and is now the pre-eminent photographer in Northern Iraq.”
Chmagh was born January 1, 1967 in Iraq. He joined the Reuters news organization before the United States-led invasion in 2003. With 4 children of his own, he financially supported his family and another three through his work.
Chmagh also supported his sister’s family after insurgents killed her husband.
Chris Helgren, then Reuters’ chief photographer in the region, launched a plan to employ and train Iraqis, with more local knowledge and access to areas now perilous for Westerners.
Helgren said: “There are few ‘good news’ stories to be had in this war and wars by definition are tales of violence. And to get there, drivers like Saeed Chmagh are indispensable.” “Saeed had a reputation of being fiercely loyal and appeared fearless to me. If you ever needed to get quickly to a dangerous area, passing chicanes of barbed wire and boobytraps, Saeed was your man. But he also had a very quiet, loving side and spoke often of his kids.”
For more than two years after the shooting, Reuters and other organizations sought probes into the deaths of Noor-Eldeen and other journalists killed in Iraq, but the U.S. military withheld key information on the grounds that it was classified.
The military also refused to release a video taken from one of the gunships that captured the complete sequence and radio communication during the shootings. On April 5, 2010, the video was released on the website WikiLeaks, which said it acquired the video from a military whistle-blower and viewed it after breaking the encryption code.
The shootings and Noor-Eldeen’s deaths are detailed in The Good Soldiers, a 2009 nonfiction book by David Finkel.
After wounded children were found among the carnage, American soldiers decided against transporting them to the best available medical facilities and instead turned them over to Iraqi police for treatment at a local medical facility.
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