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Couso case reopened in Spain
“My weeping is no different from that
of Iraqi mothers,” affirms Maribel Permuy, mother of
Spanish photographer José Couso, murdered in Baghdad
on April 8, 2003
TEXT DEISY FRANCIS
MEXIDOR —Special for Granma International
THE
day on which José Couso, a cameraman with the Madrid
channel Telecinco, died, it occurred to someone to
ask the 300 journalists covering the U.S. aggression
in Iraq to meet in the garden of the Palestine Hotel
to light candles and observe several minutes of
silence. They say that the flames burned in the
midst of absolute silence and that no bomb, plane or
single noise was heard. It was like a ceasefire to
bid him farewell.
That
same April 8, Ukrainian Taras Protsyuk, a cameraman
with the Reuters agency, also lost his life and
three workers from the same agency were left
wounded.
More
than 150 journalists have lost their lives in Iraq
since the start of the U.S. invasion in March 2003,
the vast majority of them Iraqi professionals. On
October 27 last year, the International Federation
of Journalists reported victim No. 154: Iraqi
journalist Saed Mahdi Shalash was shot dead together
with his wife in their home in the Al Ameriya area,
to the west of Baghdad.
“On
April 8, 2003, my son was on the balcony of Room
1402 at the Palestine Hotel. When he was hit by
shrapnel, he was on the 14th floor filming the
advance of two U.S. Bradley tanks on the Al Yamuria
bridge, some 15 blocks from where he was,” says
Maribel Permuy, in conversation with Granma
International.
“It
was a war crime, a public assassination, which they
tried to justify by saying that there was a
resistance sniper on the roof of the hotel and that
was why they opened fire. That’s a lie!” affirms
this woman, a native of Galicia who, in her own
words, married very young, “I was then widowed and
left with my five children. It was José who helped
me with the rest of his brothers and sisters,
because he was the eldest,” she confides and a smile
tinged with sadness appears at the mention of his
name.
Tell us about
José.
He was 37. He was
very happy.
He always said that he wanted to be a journalist. He
was extremely dedicated to his career. He married
his childhood sweetheart and they had two children
Jaime and Pepe.
What
did José tell you about U.S. aggression in Iraq? Why
did he decide to go to Baghdad?
He
believed he had to go to Iraq in order to tell the
world what was happening there. He assured me:
“They’re going to go in, those bastards are going to
go in, they’re going to devastate the place and we
have to be there to tell the world what they’re
going to do.” When he died, there was a sticker on
his camera that said: “No to the War.”
How
did you learn of his death?
I
used to go to bed with headphones in my ears to
listen through the night to the news from Baghdad,
but that day I got up in the morning to have a
coffee and all of a sudden I heard them talking
about the Palestine Hotel, where the journalists
were.
My
heart nearly burst, they mentioned something and
then I heard that they were referring to the
Telecinco cameraman. I didn’t hear José’s name but I
didn’t need to. I ran and switched on the television
set¼when we managed to communicate with the
channel’s news director, he explained to us that
from the news they had received, they were worried
that José had lost a leg. After a while they called
us to tell us that my son had died.
Did
you get his things back?
Yes.
The camera is at Telecinco, exactly as it was.
Is
there a before and after for the Couso family
following José’s murder?
Of
course. In the “after,” I have given myself the task
of condemning the war and helping other mothers to
do the same, to stop the war and the crimes that
they are committing.
We
have succeeded in securing that three U.S. soldiers
have been charged with war crimes and we’ll keep on
fighting.
José
didn’t think that he was going to die. What image of
your son are you left with?
His
smile, his face that always inspired tranquility and
joy. He has become a symbol of journalism, one that
they can’t control, a gaze that is uncomfortable for
them and for this reason they tried to sweep the
case under the carpet.
For
this reason, our current fight is directed against
U.S. war crimes and for the right of the Iraqi
people to defend themselves against the invader.
Although it pains me to say it, my son’s case is
being heard because he is Western, but what about
the Iraqi journalists who have been murdered? We’re
rebelling against all of that. My son is not more
important that Iraqis who are killed; my weeping is
no different from that of Iraqi mothers. •
José
in Baghdad (courtesy of the Couso family).
From left to right, Maribel together with three of
her children: Javier, David and Bárbara, and
granddaughter María.
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