A JUDGE IN SPAIN has reissued an arrest warrant for three US soldiers over the death of a Spanish journalist in Iraq in 2003. Jose Couso was killed when an American tank fired at a hotel that housed Western journalists during the invasion of Iraq.

The soldiers said they were responding to hostile fire from the hotel. The three soldiers named in the warrant have never appeared in Spain in connection with the base, and are all members of a tank crew from the US 3rd Infantry Division.

Couso was working as a cameraman for Spain’s Telecinco. Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk was also killed in the incident. Three other journalists were injured.

An investigation by the Committee to Protest Journalists the attack was not deliberate, but could have been avoided.

The inquiry concluded that Pentagon officials were aware that journalists were staying at the hotel, and had not intended to target it, but had failed to convey this to the tank commander who fired on the hotel.

This Japanese news crew captured images inside the hotel in the moments following the attack (warning: graphic images):

In 2006, a Spanish high court judge dismissed the Couso family’s lawsuit against the three soldiers, but last month the Spanish supreme court ordered the case be reopened.