The Terry Lloyd Death

The verdict of the Coroner's inquest in the killing of British journalist Terry Lloyd has been generating a lot of heat in the news (586 stories on Google News) but little light. Here is how the story is being typically presented. From the Scotsman...

Mr Lloyd disappeared in a hail of American gunfire as he and his three colleagues approached Iraq's second city of Basra to report on the human cost of the battle on 22 March, 2003.

He was shot in the back by an Iraqi machinegun then, as he was evacuated in a makeshift ambulance, shot again in the head by American forces.

His Lebanese interpreter Hussein Osman was later found dead and buried, while French cameraman Fred Nerac is still officially missing.

We also have the comments from the grieving widow

His widow Lynn accused US forces of allowing soldiers to "behave like trigger-happy cowboys in an area in which there were civilians travelling on a highway". In a statement she said: "The marines who fired on civilians and those who gave those orders should now stand trial. Under the Geneva Conventions Act, that trial should be for the murder of Terry Lloyd and nothing less."

but now let's look at a more thorough version of the events from the Guardian

It was early on the morning of March 21 that the ITN reporter Terry Lloyd heard that thousands of Iraqi soldiers were surrendering in the southern town of Basra. As a journalist operating independently of the military, it seemed the perfect opportunity to record the voices of those the war was being waged against and film the arrival of British troops.

He and his cameramen, Daniel Demoustier and Fred Nerac, and his Lebanese translator, Hussein Osman, set off in two vehicles clearly marked with "TV" signs. They were not to know it, but there had been no surrender.

On the road to Basra, they came across Iraqi troops near the Shatt al-Basra bridge and did a U-turn. Lloyd and Demoustier were in one 4x4 vehicle, the other two in another. It was then the firing started.

So we have a group of journalists operating independently in a war zone, which I assume to mean that no military authorities had been briefed as to the journalists' itenerary. Plus the reporters themselves were operating under false assumptions that there had been a surrender.

In his account, Demoustier said: "There were bullets everywhere, the windows were smashed. I ducked down - I was still driving - I could not see at all where I was going. I looked round and Terry was out of the car, the door was open. The car hit a ditch and I jumped out - just then the car caught fire." All hell broke loose, he said, and he was sure he was going to die.

For more than three years, it had been unclear what happened to the rest of the ITN crew, except that Demoustier was the only survivor. It was not until an Iraqi witness gave his testimony to an inquest led by the deputy Oxfordshire coroner, Andrew Walker, that the fate of the 50-year-old veteran war reporter was laid bare. Lloyd had been shot in the back by Iraqi gunfire and lay in the central reservation of the busy highway beside injured Iraqi soldiers.

So they drive into a fire fight and are hit by Iraqi gunfire. Plus the only witness to the crucial events in Lloyd's death is an Iraqi.

The Iraqi witness said: "Seeing that people needed help, I did a U-turn in the road and stopped my minibus ... I saw a man lying in the dirt between the two carriageways. On seeing the wounded soldiers getting into my minibus, he stood up and came towards me ... I could see that he was bleeding from a wound to his right shoulder. I believe that he was a journalist as he was wearing a card around his neck that said press."

The man helped Lloyd to lie down in the back of his minibus. As he drove away, the vehicle came under heavy fire. Upon arrival at a hospital in Basra, the Iraqi found Lloyd had been shot in the head.

It was this action - shooting at a civilian vehicle trying to escape from the line of fire - that the coroner considered in breach of the Geneva convention. Mr Walker said the vehicle "presented no threat to the American forces" and that they had not shot it in self-defence.

So the "makeshift ambulance" was in fact a minibus that stopped along the road, which then picked up Iraqi soldiers (who were not so wounded that they couldn't get into the minibus).

Let's recap. Journalists drive into a war zone without any military authorization, operating under false information they drive into a fire fight with Iraqi forces. After being wounded and having their vehicle destroyed, by the Iraqis, one of the reporters gets into an unmarked vehicle with a group of Iraqi soldiers. This was at a time that Iraqi irregular forces were using vehicles as "technicals" such as American forces saw in Somalia. The minibus with the already wounded Journalist was then fired on by American forces (though the witnesses are not able to agree if it was American ground or air forces that fired the fatal shots).

I close with this quote from Paul McLaughlin broadcasting organizer of the National Union of Journalists...

"ITN did everything they possibly could have done. He was one of their most experienced reporters and this was not a case of a cavalier lack of preparation."

Cavalier. maybe not. How about cowboy like.