LONDON, Feb 6: A US pilot told a colleague “We’re in jail dude” seconds after a friendly fire attack killed a British soldier in Iraq, according to cockpit video leaked on Tuesday, seriously testing Anglo-US ties.
After the video was widely shown in Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman said that the United States had agreed to formally release the film to a British inquest into the soldier’s death.
A British coroner had demanded the secret video be played in court as part of an inquiry into how Lance Corporal Matty Hull, 25, was killed on March 28, 2003, eight days after US-led forces invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.
But the United States had until now refused to declassify the film, blocking the inquest being held in Oxford.
The leaked video was played repeatedly on British television, however, and a Downing Street spokesman said Washington was now ready to “make this material available to the inquest” into Hull’s death.
The video, obtained by The Sun daily, records the pilots’ repeatedly cursing, and one of them weeping, after being told they had attacked a British patrol near the start of the 2003 Iraq war.
“I’m going to be sick,” one of the pilots says, according to the video aired by Sky News and the British Broadcasting Corp.
“Yeah, this sucks,” replies his colleague, the one The Sun said opened fire. The second pilot, says: “We’re in jail dude.” Hull was killed and four other British troops seriously wounded when US jets attacked them at the end of what The Sun said was a mission to strike artillery and rocket launchers from Iraq’s 6th Armour Division near the city of Basra.
The Sun, which also posted the video on its website, said a key error made by the pilots was to mistake orange markings on the British armour – designed to identify them as friendly forces – for enemy rockets.
Hull’s Susan widow testified that Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) had maintained previously that such a video did not even exist before it contended that it had no right to release it without US permission.
Upon hearing of the video’s release, Hull said through her lawyers: “I would have preferred to hear the evidence from the US pilots themselves. However, they cannot be compelled to come and they have not come voluntarily.
“The video is therefore vital evidence and must be shown,” his widow said, adding that she did not relish hearing it in open court.
Oxfordshire assistant deputy coroner Andrew Walker last Friday adjourned an inquest into Hull’s death until March 12 while the defence ministry tried to secure authorisation for the classified material to be shown to the inquest.
However, Geoff Webb, the coroner’s officer, said the leaking of the tape changed the dynamic. “This material is now in the public domain and that means that it can be used in the Matty Hull inquest,” he said.
Walker watched the tape last on Wednesday but made clear his anger on Friday that the defence ministry had not secured the necessary permission for it to be played in court, saying it was “a matter of profound regret”. The Sun, which did not say how it obtained the video, said six errors were made by the pilots, including failure to identify the orange markings and give the exact grid references for the British patrol.
Most of Hull’s comrades in the Household Cavalry Regiment had not yet seen the footage but planned to watch it later on home computers, a regimental source told Britain's domestic Press Association news agency.—AFP