Spanish court shelves case against US soldiers in Iraq (Roundup)

Jul 14, 2009, 14:12 GMT

Madrid - Spain's National Court on Tuesday ordered one of its judges to shelve a case he had opened against three US soldiers for the death of Spanish cameraman Jose Couso during the Iraq war.

Couso was killed when a US tank fired at a Baghdad hotel where journalists were staying in April 2003.

The penal chamber of the court sided with an appeal that prosecutors had lodged against the case.

Judge Santiago Pedraz was accusing Sergeant Thomas Gibson, Lieutenant Colonel Philip de Camp, and unit commander Captain Philip Wolford of homicide.

The case had been shelved earlier, and was reopened by Pedraz in May. The judge modified the charges, replacing a premeditated killing and a crime against the international community with homicide.

The court said there was no significant new information justifying the new proceedings.

Pedraz had rejected the US argument that the soldiers fired at the hotel in self-defence, believing a sniper was targeting them. But the court regarded the argument as credible.

Couso, who worked for the television station Telecinco, and a Ukrainian cameraman for the Reuters news agency were killed in the attack.