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Published in January 2005

published in Revista Amanecer

Javier Couso, brother of the Spanish journalist José Couso, killed by US soldiers in Palestine Hotel in Baghdad

Almost two years after Jose’s murder in Baghdad, what is the legal situation of the case now? Has the lawsuit against the American army or government for its responsibility in the case gone ahead?

Filing the lawsuit against the three American soldiers has gone through difficult times, which we have thankfully overcome. We have also had to go through three different judges since the one assigned to the court was removed from the judicial profession.

Currently we are in initial proceedings, which is more or less the situation prior to the acceptance of proceedings. In recent months there have been various procedures (taking the statements of various journalist eyewitnesses to the killing, request for information from the Ministry of Defence...) and we are waiting for the replies to various requests which have been made in Europe and the United States. On the other hand we have had a meeting with the State Office of the Public Prosecutor, to ask them to show, at least, a neutral attitude and requesting that they do not behave like the former Office of the Public Prosecutor, whose behaviour was more like that of the defence of the three accused soldiers rather than that of their own compatriot. The fact that two years after the murder of my brother a criminal lawsuit against the three soldiers of the United States army is still on going is a triumph for us. We trust that justice in this country is really independent and that it show strength and determination to clear up the killing of a compatriot under dubious circumstances.

Javier Couso and some friends before the Hotel Palestine, in Baghdad

What has been the American government’s reaction to your allegation? Has it been ignoring you?

The word to define the American attitude could be ’insulting’. The only time they have addressed us was by means of a letter sent by the embassy wherein they labeled José a “hero of democracy”, it was the type of letter that they send to marines killed in combat, something, I repeat, which we found insulting and which makes you nauseous due to its cynicism and lack of morality. From then on there has been no direct contact, they have never contacted us to give us any type of explanations about what occurred and the only ‘report’ which they have presented has been at the request of the Ukrainian government (a Ukrainian reporter was killed along with my brother) and we have received it after pressuring the Ukrainian government. This pseudo report concludes with a series of lies (they have changed their version four times) with the only intention being to exonerate their soldiers, even calling the attack on the Hotel Palestine “ an act of self defense”.

What was Aznar’s government’s attitude to the case of José’s death? Has there been any change now since the PSOE came to power?

Aznar’s government acted at all times as a crony of the US government, complying with and accepting the different justifications which Bush’s government fabricated. The abandonment and lack of support of the Spanish government towards my family is a shameful episode of the complete relinquishing of national sovereignty and institutional solidarity towards a compatriot who was murdered in the most brutal way. But we are not only talking about neglect of duties, Aznar’s own attitude was arrogant, scornful and lacked a sense of humanity towards my family and the memory of my brother. José’s had become an uncomfortable death which reflected the whole horror of this war, and having been labeled as enemies, we were treated as such.

The arrival of the PSOE government has brought with it a change in attitude, we have had various meetings with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and with the Vice President and we have presented our demands to them on a State level, which is no more than the Ukrainian government did at the death of their compatriot (denouncing the attack, request for diplomatic explanations, state recognition and awarding of a medal for the work done with the economic compensation that comes with it). We can say that today we are half way, the Gold Medal for Work Merit and compensation have been awarded, but we are still waiting for the presentation of the medal, a ceremony during which we expect there to be an state condemnation and a public petition for explanations on a diplomatic level from government to government. We will verbally continue to demand these loose ends be tied up, and if that is not successful, by marches in the streets. As we repeat again and again, our fight for justice is not politically biased and does not depend on the colour of the government in power, but rather on its willingness to give us justice.

The demand for justice for José has gained support across the whole of Spanish society. How do you gauge the attitude of the Spanish public opinion towards your demand? Have you had signs of solidarity from abroad?

We have felt incredibly supported, all this love, all this energy that has accompanied us and that is still with us to this day, it is the fuel that feeds the engine of our struggle. José was picked chosen by the vast majority of Spanish society as a symbol for the injustice of this war and they understood perfectly the shameful way the former government behaved towards our family, and we did not feel abandoned by the Spanish people at any time. And this is not just in Madrid, on our travels through the whole of this country there has not been a village, town or city where we have not felt the same love and solidarity towards José and this quest for justice.

In order to understand the attack of the US army on Al Yazeera, Abhu Dabi TV and the Palestine Hotel, that is to say on all the press centres independent of the United States in Bagdad on the 8th April 2003, which led to the killing of three journalists including my brother, we have had to carry out an exercise in contextualization which has led us to discover all the years of attacks on the Arab world and which culminated in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. From that moment on we have felt strongly linked to the struggle of the Palestinian and Iraqi people and even more so when we accepted that José is just another victim of this invasion, no more important than any other of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed by the United States army.

Thanks to this investigation and mobilization, we have got to know of many cases similar to our own, which has led us to meet other families of murdered journalists. We have been in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and even Iraq and in all these countries we have encountered the same solidarity heightened, possibly due to the fact that we speak the same language of pain.

Soon we will be going on a tour of the United States, to try to get across the case of my brother and with it the whole massacre in Iraq, since we know that there are many people there who are kept in complete ignorance.

How do you gauge the attitude of the media with regard to José’s murder?

We have always said that, support from those involved in the media has been and continues to be absolute, but in terms of real power we are at a disadvantage, so whenever we can, we repeat that we have the absolute support of the journalistic community. There is little that a family along with Jose’s colleagues and friends can do to stop this attack, the aim of which is to dispense with independent reporting of wars. The only way to turn around this criminal attempt to blind us, would be to effect a joint effort on behalf of the family, the colleagues from the media, public opinion, journalistic corporations and governments. On our part and that of the citizenry I believe that we have given our all but we are having to struggle to form a compelling force which will effect change, and more so now, with the taking of Fallujah we have come to the end of a cycle which started that eighth of April and the consequence of which is the complete absence of independent sources in the area. The only sources are the "embedded" reporters and the news agencies on the ground which send us, the people, information which is dangerously close to the ideology of the occupiers. This situation turns journalism into something illegitimate and perverse, losing the guarantee of independence by becoming an involved party, and can lead to the loss of any credibility whatsoever.

How do you see the current situation in Iraq with the background of the growing activity of the Iraqi resistance and the continuous US attacks on towns such as Fallujah?

I see a total failure of the occupation on all levels, political, economic and military. The United States is stuck and it cannot find a way out of the quagmire it has got itself into. When I was in Baghdad in April of 2003 I could see it all clearly, the American soldiers only controlled the ground they stood on, the resistance was spread far and near in the country (nothing to do with the hyped and mediatic Sunni triangle) social, sanitary or security breakdown increases the abyss between the occupation forces and those collaborating with the people of Iraq. Today this situation I saw may be a hundred times worse. The criminal attack on Fallujah, where more than six thousand people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced, is due to the attempt to raise the level of terror to subdue these people, who will not surrender, by means of massacres. The result is this debacle for the United States since it has gained control of Fallujah, which today is a symbol of Iraqi dignity. The awareness of these atrocities has resulted in spectacular support for the civilian and military resistance and strengthened their will not to let themselves be wiped out without a fight.

Do you think it necessary to strengthen the role of the international justice tribunals so that those guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity do not go unpunished?

Of course. It is a crucial element of any initiative that we can carry out aimed at stopping this new scenario where the strongest powers do as they please in defence of their strategic interests. Despite all the criticisms that we can level at the international laws, laws which in many cases are useless (Palestine and Iraq being clear cases of this) they are the only legal ways open to us in our aim to build more just relationships between countries which do not support the legitimisation of the politics of aggression which demolish any concept of national or popularly elected sovereignty. Coexistence based on international justice is the only dignified way to live.