Spanish court seeks arrest of US soldiers (Roundup)

Jul 29, 2010, 22:52 GMT

Madrid - A Spanish judge Thursday ordered the arrest of three US soldiers on charges of unlawfully killing 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.

National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz accused Lieutenant Colonel Philip de Camp, Captain Philip Wolford and Sergeant Thomas Gibson of homicide and of a crime against the international community.

The case has already been shelved several times before.

Pedraz said he reopened it in the hope that US President Barack Obama's administration would be more willing to cooperate than that of former president George W Bush, which refused to extradite the three soldiers.

Washington argued that the soldiers fired at the hotel in self- defence, believing a sniper was targeting them. US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters in Washington that the soldiers have previously been cleared.

'The soldiers involved were subject to an investigation by the military ... under the existing situation that happened in Iraq, they were cleared of any wrongdoing,' Crowley said.

Pedraz, however, said there were reasons to believe they had 'attacked the civilian population.'

Pedraz said he wanted to travel to Iraq to carry out an investigation there, and to question journalists who had witnessed Couso's death.

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