Reuters seeks new inquiry into Iraq hotel deaths

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Reuters News said on Tuesday it was seeking a fresh inquiry into the 2003 killing of two journalists in Baghdad by a U.S. tank crew after a report raised new questions about their deaths.

Reuters Ukrainian cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman with the Spanish network Telecinco, were killed by a tank shell that hit the Palestine Hotel on April 8, 2003, in the final stages of the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Reuters News, part of global information company Thomson Reuters, said it would write to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee to push for another inquiry after a report by U.S. Internet news and current affairs broadcaster Democracy Now.

On May 15, Democracy Now (www.democracynow.org) posted an interview with a former U.S. army sergeant in military intelligence who said that prior to the invasion she had been given a list of targets for potential attack that included the Palestine Hotel.

The sergeant, Adrienne Kinne, said she had also been ordered to eavesdrop on the telephone conversations of journalists who were staying at the hotel.

Kinne, who served in the military from 1994 until 2004, said she was surprised to see the hotel listed as a potential target given the number of foreign media there, she told Democracy Now in a lengthy interview posted on its website.

A large foreign media contingent stayed at the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad in the lead-up to the invasion and then during the war that toppled Saddam.

Kinne said the list of targets had been circulated in an e-mail that she had received.

A U.S. military investigation found the tank crew acted within their rules of engagement, saying they fired because they thought they saw a spotter who was guiding in hostile fire.