Photographer Namir Nour El Deen's Brother Reacts To The Wikileaks Video: "It Was Clearly A Crime"

Turborama

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Tue Apr-06-10 12:45 AM
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Photographer Namir Nour El Deen's Brother Reacts To The Wikileaks Video: "It Was Clearly A Crime"

Edited on Tue Apr-06-10 01:33 AM by Turborama

I'm getting sick of people just referring to him as a "war photographer", "Reuters employee" etc. His name was Namir Nour El Deen and he was a human being with a family, not just a job title.

In this video Nabil Nour El Deen speaks out about the shooting of his brother after watching the Wikileaks footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jgqRzwh-fI

This is a pretty much a http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x452135">cross post from the videos forum for anyone who doesn't go there very often. It's intended to add some humanity to discussions about "the Reuters reporters".

Think about it for a sec, Nabil has just seen his brother being shot and heard US soldiers treating it as if they were just fooling around with an XBox. As Wikileaks' editor Julian Assange described in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack">article on this video...

"Why would anyone be so relaxed with two Apaches if someone was carrying an RPG and that person was an enemy of the United States?" he said. "The behaviour of the pilots is like a computer game. When Saeed is crawling, clearly unable to do anything, their response is: come on buddy, we want to kill you, just pick up a weapon ... It appears to be a desire to get a higher score, or a higher number of kills."

This isn't just a one off incident, either.

For example, here's another report of US soldiers getting a buzz out of shooting a wounded Iraqi in 2003.

Take No Prisoners

U.S. Marines execute an Iraqi to the cheers of fellow marines

-:WARNING:-

This Video Should Only Be Viewed By A Mature Audience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-WRipsF8dE

Transcript:

CNN Presents: Fit To Kill

Aired October 26, 2003 - 20:00 ET

CROWLEY: Wounded, another Iraqi writhes on the ground next to his gun. The Marines kill him -- then cheer.

RIDDLE: Like, man, you guys are dead now, you know. But it was a good feeling.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fire!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah!

CROWLEY: When the battle is over and you are still standing, the adrenalin rush is huge.

RIDDLE: I mean, afterwards you're like, hell, yeah, that was awesome. Let's do it again.

Responses: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5365.htm

http://www.expose-the-war-profiteers.org/DOD/iraq_II_videos/fit_to_kill.htm">Background - Iraq, Autumn 2003
Information Clearing House has a video clip from a CNN Presents segment entitled ‘Fit To Kill.’ The video clip features the slaying of a wounded Iraqi lying prostrate on the ground ‘next to his gun.’ It is hard to discern any weapon near the man in the video; nevertheless, he was incapacitated and the marines kept firing at him. Next a bullet rips into the doomed man’s body; it heaves one final time; the neck snaps back and flips forward, and his body slumps deathly limp. Whoops of merriment are plainly audible from the killers. It used to be that morality decreed that one should ‘never hit a man when he's down.’ The inescapable conclusion is either that this morality is no longer in effect or that these killers are behaving immorally. <…>”

Excerpt from http://www.expose-the-war-profiteers.org/archive/media/2003-2/20031215.htm">Challenging the Justification of Killing by "Dissident Voice" from December 15th, 2003

(Edited to fix typo)