Iraq charges against GIs dropped
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Spain’s National Court said it had dropped charges against three U.S. soldiers who opened fire on a Baghdad hotel in 2003, killing a Spanish journalist.
The soldiers had been charged with homicide and a crime against the international community -- defined under Spanish law as an indiscriminate or excessive attack against civilians during wartime -- for the death of TV cameraman Jose Couso, killed when a U.S. tank shell hit the hotel where he and other journalists were staying.
A Ukrainian cameraman working for the Reuters news agency, Taras Protsyuk, also died.
The court agreed that the firing of the shell was not a crime but an accident of war.
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