IRAQ: A videotape shot from a US Apache helicopter near Baghdad shows US soldiers shooting dead three Iraqis at a check-point.
One is wounded and attempts to crawl away after his truck is hit. The helicopter crew nonetheless fire on him and kill him. Under the Geneva Convention killing a wounded man is a war crime.
The video was shot on December 1st, 2003, and was broadcast by the French network Canal + on Tuesday night. Mr Emmanuel Chain, the presenter of the programme Merci pour l'info, said it was shown by the US network ABC in January and was broadcast in Germany too. However, no one reacted.
Now the video is seen as further evidence of US brutality in Iraq, in the light of last week's revelation of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, similar allegations against British forces in Basra, and a US general's admission on Tuesday that 25 prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan have died in US custody.
Mr Chain said the US network CBS and television stations from Italy and Poland - countries with troops in Iraq - were among the many networks who scrambled to obtain the video after it was broadcast. The tape was given to Canal + by a civilian contractor who was working for the US army and obtained it on a base in Iraq.
At around 8 p.m. on December 1st, a four-wheel-drive pickup truck drove towards a US army checkpoint on the outskirts of Baghdad. The truck turned around and stopped several hundred metres away alongside a parked heavy lorry.
The drivers stand talking in the road, apparently unaware that they are being filmed with night vision equipment by the helicopter. The US soldiers speculate that they are "having a pow wow".
The video was recorded by a camera in the Apache, which was hovering over the checkpoint. At least three voices can be heard: a US lieutenant on the ground at the checkpoint, giving orders to the helicopter, the helicopter pilot and the gunner. The army code "223 Gun Video, 01 Dec 03" appears at the beginning of the tape, the words "PC CW2 Nager, CPG-CPT Alioto" at the end.
One of the Iraqis pulls what appears to be a rocket-propelled grenade launcher from the cab of the pickup. He runs into a field and throws it on the ground. "I got a guy running and throwing a weapon," the voice in the helicopter says as the gunner's cross-hairs follow the man.
"Smoke him," says another American voice.
"Get the guy in the field. Get the guy in the field," the lieutenant on the ground orders. The man who discarded the weapon may well have been an insurgent, but he was obviously frightened by the checkpoint and was disarmed by the time the helicopter attacked.
The Iraqi runs back to the pickup, appears confused, then runs to a tractor that has stopped in what appears to be a freshly ploughed row in the field. The tractor driver dismounts and runs towards the two trucks.
There is the rat-a-tat-tat of heavy machine gun fire, but neither of the men in the field is hit. After an obscene word and a short discussion about range, the heavy machine gun fires again, killing the man who was driving the tractor. "Got him," the voice in the helicopter says.
"Good," says the officer. "Second one. Hit the other one." The sights swerve back to the tractor, which is blown up along with the second Iraqi.
The helicopter then spies the third man, hiding behind the heavy lorry. "Hit him," comes the order.
A cloud of black smoke envelopes the front of the lorry. The helicopter is about to move on to the pickup when the helicopter detects movement.
A man is crawling on the ground, away from the burning lorry. He rolls over. "He's wounded," one of the Americans observes. "Hit him," comes the order. "Go forward of it (the pickup) and hit him." The helicopter opens fire for the fourth time.
Its camera then pans from left to right, showing four blackened splotches in the Iraqi countryside: the destroyed tractor, the dead tractor driver, the heavy lorry and the pickup truck. "What do you say? Three?" is heard on the tape.
"Mission complete," says the officer. "Three killed."