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Video: ‘A Testimony of Evil’: How Manning’s ‘Collateral Murder’ Revelation Changed History
On the day whistleblower Chelsea Manning is released from prison, RT looks back on ‘Collateral Murder,’ the most explosive revelation from Manning’s leaked documents – a haunting video depicting US military killing Iraqi civilians.
On the day whistleblower Chelsea Manning is released from prison, RT looks back on ‘Collateral Murder,’ the most explosive revelation from Manning’s leaked documents – a haunting video depicting US military killing Iraqi civilians.
The ‘Collateral Murder’ video shows an aerial attack carried out by US Apache helicopters in East Baghdad in 2007, which killed more than a dozen people.
Two Reuters staff – journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and camera assistant Saeed Chmagh – were killed in the attack, along with driver Saleh Matasher Tomal, whose two children Sayeed and Doha were injured when the US opened fire as their father attempted to help the injured.
“The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths occurred,” WikiLeaks reported at the time.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic investigative journalist who worked with WikiLeaks to investigate the ‘Collateral Murder’ video, told RT his “jaw dropped” when he saw what he described as “a testimony of evil.”
Hrafnsson was sitting in a Reykjavik cafe with WikiLeaks Editor Julian Assange in 2010 when he first watched the footage. “You have to see this,” Assange told him.
“I instantly saw that this would probably be the biggest news story I had worked on,” Hrafnsson recalled.
Hrafnsson watched the footage “hundreds of times, frame by frame,” as he investigated it, eventually travelling to Iraq to meet with relatives of those killed.
“It turns your stomach to see the merciless killing,” he said. “It wasn’t easy to watch and even still, when I watch it today, I feel the same nausea.”
The footage not only shows the US military knew the dead were not all insurgents, but reveals the callous attitudes of the soldiers.
After initially engaging and shooting around eight people, including Eldeen and Chmagh, the footage shows the helicopters open fire again, targeting a van driven by Matasher, who was attempting to help the wounded Chmagh.
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