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Baghdad (AFP) - Iraq's economy could reach irreversible lows within the next year unless urgent reform measures are adopted, its finance minister warned in an exclusive interview with AFP on Monday.

"Reform is inevitable," said Ali Allawi, who has been tasked with stabilising Iraq's economy following an oil price crash that saw state revenues slashed by half.

"If we do not amend the situation throughout the next year, we may face shocks we cannot fix."

Iraq's economy is already projected to shrink by 10 percent this year following a dramatic drop in oil prices from over $50 per barrel to around $20.

OPEC's second-biggest oil producer relies almost exclusively on its crude exports to fund its budget, which includes a bloated public sector and mass subsidies.

When he took over the finance ministry in May, Allawi told AFP, he was "shocked" to find so little liquidity.

"A government should normally have at least one-and-a-half months of spending in its accounts in case of emergencies or shocks, but in reality there was only a tenth of this amount. There should have been 10-15 trillion IQD (up to $12 billion), but there were only two trillion dinars," he said.

Iraq spends at least $4.5 billion a month just to pay public workers and run the government.

"The finances are worse than it was in 2005 or 2006. We are in an existential economic situation," said Allawi, 73, who was also finance minister at that time.

Then, Iraq was paying public salaries to around a million people, with oil prices at around $35.

Now, a barrel sells for the same amount -- but the state is responsible for 4.5 million workers, 2.5 million retirees and around a million welfare recipients.

- 'Hit a wall' -

At his family home in Baghdad, surrounded by books on history and economics, Allawi told AFP he hoped to pay June and July's public salaries on time by borrowing internally.

"We can do this up to a certain ceiling, but if we exceed that ceiling then we'll face serious risks," he said, sporting a pink tie and glasses with translucent frames.

Story continues

To navigate these dangers, Allawi said he would propose a full reform plan to parliament within three months, including austerity measures that could last two years.

He hopes to cut senior salaries, halt "double-dipping" for Iraqis who receive multiple state welfare packages, access aid from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and boost Iraq's non-oil revenues to make it less vulnerable to dramatic price changes.

Economic experts -- including Allawi -- have advocated such steps ever since the 2003 US-led invasion.

"If oil prices stay at this level for a year, and our expenses stay the same, without a doubt we're going to hit a wall," Allawi told AFP.

"We can't lead a country, particularly from the economic side, by hoping oil prices rise enough to cover costs."

Allawi, who served as finance minister in a transitional government Iraqi in 2005, finds himself in a similar position now: part of a short-term cabinet that has inherited a web of challenges from its predecessors.

Former prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi's cabinet discussed austerity measures at length but never implemented them, top Iraqi officials told AFP, fearing backlash from the public and the political elite using state coffers to buy influence.

- 'Major failures' -

Instead, public outrage has focused on new Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi -- and Allawi.

The new cabinet sought to save by cutting monthly disbursements to ex-political prisoners and retirees earning a double-wage, but that sparked accusations it was targeting the country's most vulnerable citizens while turning a blind eye to graft among top officials.

Iraq is perceived as the 16th most corrupt country in the world according to Transparency International, with some $450 billion in public funds vanishing into the pockets of shady politicians and businessmen since 2004.

Asked if he thought he could regain the public's trust, Allawi admitted it would be a tremendous task.

"There have been major failures on behalf of successive governments in recent years, leading to a loss of confidence between the state and citizens," he said.

"I'm not asking them to trust us first, but to wait for the measures that we will take if they are fair, equitable and useful," he added.

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Without urgent reform, Iraq economy will face irreparable shocks: minister to AFP - Yahoo News

Qassim Abdul-zahra and Samya Kullab, Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) Iraqi security forces arrested over a dozen men suspected of a spate of rocket attacks against the U.S. presence in Iraq, the Iraqi military said Friday.

Two senior Iraqi officials said the 14 men who were arrested had ties to an Iran-backed militia group. The arrests marked a bold move by the government to crack down on groups that have long been a source of tension for U.S.-Iraq relations. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

A raid by Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service was carried out late Thursday in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood. A military statement did not explicitly state the men had militia ties and said a special investigative committee formed to include the Interior Ministry and other Iraqi security forces would follow up on the case.

Following the arrests, armed groups in government vehicles entered the Green Zone without official approval and surrounded the headquarters of the counter-terrorism service, the statement said.

These parties do not want to be part of the state and its obligations and seek to remain outside the authority of the Commander-in-Chief, the statement said.

The operation was carried out according to a judicial order based on Iraq's anti-terrorism laws, and was issued following intelligence reports indicating the men had orchestrated attacks against U.S. installations in Baghdad airport and inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the U.S. embassy is located.

The statement said further intelligence reports indicated another plot targeting the Green Zone. Two launching pads for rockets were discovered during the raid by security forces.

On Monday, a rocket struck in the vicinity of the airport without causing casualties. It was the fourth such attack targeting the U.S. presence since Baghdad embarked on strategic talks with the U.S. on June 11. The attacks were proving to be a key challenge for Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, whose government had promised to take action against militia groups suspected of orchestrating them.

Two senior government officials said the men detained had ties to the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia group, which the U.S. has blamed for orchestrating attacks against its embassy and troops located inside Iraqi bases.

The arrests are an indication of the prime minister's determination to clamp down on terrorist activity, on official said.

They said intelligence reports indicated the group was planning on carrying out more attacks targeting the airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

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Iraqi forces arrest men suspected of attacks targeting US - The Ridgefield Press

As decades of war and occupation come to an end, Iraqis are confronting their new era head on. A massive wave of protests across the country demanding an end to corruption and respect for human rights toppled the government in 2019. With a new prime minister in place who speaks directly to many of the protesters concerns, there is some hope the government may finally address some of these issues. But as space for such conversation opens, it is unclear whether the new government will be able to address an ongoing campaign by many authorities to silence critics, with journalists and activists facing violence, harassment, and prosecution for simply speaking out. Paul Aufiero talks with senior researcher Belkis Wille about her new report on the threat to free speech in Iraq and what this important moment means for the country.

What is different about this moment in Iraq?

In October 2019, a massive protest movement hit the country, with millions of people in the streets. Young people in the center and south of the country came together through a non-sectarian lens to call for basic human rights for all Iraqis, regardless of ethnicity, language, or belief. Their demands and the wave of protests they sparked forced Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to resign in November, marking the first time popular protests in Iraq led to a change in power.

In May, a new prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, took over. Al-Kadhimi is a former journalist and went into exile under Saddam Hussein. When he came back to Iraq, he became the head of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service. Since becoming prime minister, he has been vocal about tackling some of the most difficult and sensitive human rights issues in Iraq, which is quite incredible. So with this new leadership, there is an opportunity to realize one of the loudest demands of protesters: that authorities reengage with the public.

This is also one of the first times since 2003 where the violence in the country has diminished to the point that Iraqis can start talking about things not related to war. The country has endured years of conflict, through the United States-led invasion and occupation, a civil war, and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). Now Iraqis can finally demand politicians engage in issues affecting their human rights not through the lens of national security.

But there is another story taking place alongside this. What does your report describe?

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, those he oppressed have been interested in opening the country in terms of elections and free speech. But things took a turn in the opposite direction over the last decade. Authorities have dealt with critics not only through violence, which we have seen when protesters were beaten and killed, but also through campaigns using laws to prosecute speech they dont like, intimidating people into silence.

Who is being targeted in this campaign? Why?

In the autonomous Kurdistan Region in the north, like in Baghdad-controlled areas, there is almost no money for independent media, so most of the outlets are funded by one of the two main Kurdish political parties, or smaller groups. Journalists working for the outlet of one party are often sent to cover protests instigated by that party in territory controlled by another and are sometimes arrested or beaten by Kurdish security forces, or even killed. And prosecutions against journalists are also happening in Kurdistan along political lines.

But this is happening across the country, also in Baghdad and the south. Authorities are using vague legal provisions to target journalists, activists, and frankly, anyone posting criticism on social media, including people writing on their own Facebook pages. This should not be illegal.

In Baghdad, the penal code has provisions that broadly deal with defamation. You could be prosecuted if you say anything that insults an Arab country or someone in power, for example. But there is no definition of what constitutes an insult, so these provisions are extremely opaque. Another set of provisions deals with incitement, and authorities use these against people they claim posted something online that could either incite someone to carry out a criminal act or threaten national security. But there is no standard for what this means in practice.

And in addition to being arrested, a lot of these people are getting threatening messages on their phones saying, Youre next. Well kill you if you keep writing about this [issue]. And there is a systemic problem in Iraq where if those receiving threats go to the police, the police do nothing to protect them.

What penalties do people face if found guilty of these vague charges?

Depending on the provision someone is charged under, they could face up to 10 years in prison, a fine of up to about US$800, or both. And some say security forces beat them while interrogating them. But what is interesting is that we documented very few cases where someone is forced to serve an actual prison sentence. Authorities are clearly not interested in filling prisons with these people. I suspect that the point of these prosecutions is to intimidate people so much that the next time they want to post something critical of the government on Facebook, they dont. Its about harassment and silencing.

In the course of your research, were there any cases that particularly stood out to you?

One man, Haitham Sulaiman, is a 48-year-old protest organizer based near Baghdad, who got involved taking on corruption in Iraq. In early April, after hearing that the local health department might be making exorbitant profits off the cost of paper masks amid the Covid-19 pandemic, he posted the allegation on Facebook and called on authorities to investigate. The next day, intelligence officers from the Ministry of the Interior came to his house and left a warning that he had to stop writing about corruption. A few days later, four men in plain clothes arrested him and took him to the intelligence office, where they beat him and forced him to sign a document saying the Iraqi protest movement of 2019 had been bankrolled by the US. They then charged him under the penal code for willfully sharing false or biased information that endangered public security.

Another woman, Amal (not her real name), has protested corruption in Basra for years, been openly critical of different political parties online, and had posted videos of herself protesting in 2018, at the time of large-scale protests in southern Iraq. Around that time, while at home one night, she saw three masked men open gunfire on her house. She fled the city with her children but came back three weeks later. A few days after returning, an armed man came to her house and threatened that if she didnt leave with her family, theyd all be killed. She has since fled the country.

What hope does the new government offer to address these issues?

The first thing the government should do is institute legal reforms and amend the penal code and other problematic laws to limit the abusive impact of these vague provisions. Security forces should investigate threats and acts of violence against journalists, activists, and social media critics.

But the prime minister, having seen the power of the countrys protests firsthand, should send the message down through Iraqs government structure that he will no longer put up with those who abuse their powers to go after people who said something they dont like, and will punish them. And maybe for the first time in Iraqs history its possible this could happen.

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Interview: Journalists, Critics Threatened & Harassed in Iraq - Human Rights Watch

For all the countless words from the United States military about its killing of the Iraqi Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, their colleague Dean Yates has two of his own: All lies.

The former Reuters Baghdad bureau chief has also inked some on his arm a permanent declaration of how those lies fucked me up, while he blamed first Namir unfairly and then himself for the killings.

The tattoo on his left shoulder features a looped green ribbon bearing the words Iraq, Bali and Aceh. At opposite points of the ribbon is etched PTSD and Fight Back, Moral injury and July 12 2007.

Yatess experiences covering the 2002 Bali bombings and the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 seeded his post-traumatic stress, but 12 July 2007 is the day that changed his life irrevocably while violently ending Namirs and Saeeds. Its also the day that linked him by a thread of truth to the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who would, three years later, become the worlds most infamous hacker-publisher-activist with his release of thousands of classified US military secrets.

They included a video WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder, filmed from a US military Apache helicopter as it blasted to pieces Namir, 22, and Saeed, 40, and nine other men, while seriously wounding two children.

The US continues its legal efforts to extradite Assange from a British prison, where he is remanded in failing health, to face espionage allegations. Instructively, the detailed, 37-page US indictment against him makes no mention of Collateral Murder the video that caused the US government and military more reputational damage than all the other secret documents combined, and that launched WikiLeaks and Assange as the foremost global enemy of state secrecy.

Is the US concerned that referring to the video will give rise to war crimes charges against the military personnel involved in the attack? Certainly, bringing the video into the prosecution case against Assange could only vindicate his role in exposing the US militarys lies about the ghastly killings.

Early on 12 July 2007 Yates sat in the slot desk in the Reuters office in Baghdads red zone. He was ready for the usual: a car bomb attack while Iraqis headed to work, a militant strike on a market, the police or the Iraqi military. It was quieter than usual.

Yates recalls: Loud wailing broke out near the back of our office I still remember the anguished face of the Iraqi colleague who burst through the door. Another colleague translated: Namir and Saeed have been killed.

Reuters staff drove to the al-Amin neighbourhood where Namir had told colleagues he was going to check out a possible US dawn airstrike. Witnesses said Namir, a photographer, and Saeed, a driver/fixer, had been killed by US forces, possibly in an airstrike during a clash with militants.

Yates emailed the US military spokesman in Iraq and telephoned a senior Reuters editor to tell him the news.

While the bureau was in a crisis of anger and mourning, Yates still had to write the early stories about the two men killed on his watch. He initially wrote that they had died in what Iraqi police called American military action.

Yates says: Pictures taken by our photographers and camera operators showed a minivan at the scene, its front mangled by a powerful concussive force There was much we didnt know. US soldiers had seized Namirs two cameras, so we couldnt check what hed been photographing.

By early evening the military spokesman still had not replied. Yates pressed him for a response and for the return of Namirs cameras. Just after midnight, the US military released a statement headlined: Firefight in New Baghdad. US, Iraqi forces kill 9 insurgents, detain 13.

It quoted a US lieutenant as saying: Nine insurgents were killed in the ensuing firefight. One insurgent was wounded and two civilians were killed during the firefight. The two civilians were reported as employees for the Reuters news service. There is no question that Coalition Forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force.

Yates, shaking his head, says: The US assertions that Namir and Saeed were killed during a firefight was all lies. But I didnt know that at the time, so I updated my story to take in the US militarys statement.

It was a shocking time for locally engaged staff of foreign news organisations in Baghdad. On 13 July, the day of Namir and Saeeds funerals, Khalid Hassan, a New York Times reporter/translator, was shot dead.

After the funerals Yates pressed the US military for Namirs cameras and for access to cameras and air-to-ground recordings involving the Apache that killed his colleagues.

On 14 July, Yates learned that militants had murdered a Reuters Iraqi text translator.

In an effort to save employees lives, he began collaborating with other foreign news organisation managers to engage with the US military to better understand its rules of engagement.

We dealt with them in good faith, he says. What a joke that turned out to be.

On 15 July the US military returned Namirs cameras. Namir had photographed the aftermath of an earlier shooting and, a few minutes later (just before his death), US military Humvees at a nearby crossroads. There were no frames of insurgent gunmen or clashes with US forces. Date and time stamps show that three hours after Namir died his camera photographed a US soldier in a barrack or tent. The troops who mopped up the killing scene evidentlymessed around with his cameras afterwards.

Reuters staff had by now spoken to 14 witnesses in al-Amin. All of them said they were unaware of any firefight that might have prompted the helicopter strike.

Yates recalls: The words that kept forming on my lips were cold-blooded murder.

The Iraqi staff at Reuters, meanwhile, were concerned that the bureau was too soft on the US military. But I could only write what we could establish and the US military was insisting Saeed and Namir were killed during a clash, Yates says.

The meeting that put him on a path of destructive, paralysing eventually suicidal guilt and blame that basically fucked me up for the next 10 years, leaving him in a state of moral injury, happened at US military headquarters in the Green Zone on 25 July.

Yates and a Reuters colleague met the two US generals who had overseen the investigation into the killings of Namir and Saeed.

It was a long, off-the-record meeting. The generals revealed a mass of detail, telling them a US battalion had been seeking militias responsible for roadside bombs. They had called in helicopter support after coming under fire. One Apache had the call sign Crazy Horse 1-8.

They described a group of men spotted by this Apache, Yates says. Some appeared to be armed and Crazy Horse 1-8 had requested permission to fire because we were told these men were military-aged males and they appeared to have weapons and they were acting suspiciously. So, we were told those men on the ground were then engaged.

The generals showed them photographs of what was collected after the shooting, including a couple of AK-47s [assault rifles], an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] launcher and two cameras.

I have wondered for many years how much of that meeting was carefully choreographed so we would go away with a certain impression of what happened. Well, for a time it worked, Yates says.

There was some discussion about what permitted Crazy Horse 1-8 to open fire if there was no firefight. One of the generals insisted the dead were of military age and, because apparently armed, were therefore expressing hostile intent.

Yates says: Then they said, OK, we are just going to show you a little bit of footage from the camera of Crazy Horse 1-8.

The generals showed them about three minutes of video, beginning with a group including Saeed and Namir on the street.

We heard the pilot seek permission from the ground to attack. After the pilot receives permission, the men are obscured. The chopper circles for a clear aim.

Yates says: When the chopper circled around, Namir can be seen going to a corner and crouching down holding something his long-lens camera and is taking photographs of Humvees. One of the crew says, Hes got an RPG Hes clearly agitated. And then another 15, 20 seconds the crew gets a clear line of sight Im watching Namir crouching down with his camera which the pilot thinks is an RPG and theyre about to open fire. I then see a man I believe to be Saeed walking away, talking on the phone. Then cannon fire hits them. Ive got my head in my hands The generals stop the tape.

The generals downplayed a slightly later incident when they said a van had pulled up and Crazy Horse 1-8 assessed it as aiding the insurgents, removing their bodies and weapons.

At some point after watching that footage it became burnt into my mind that the reason the helicopter opened fire was because Namir was peering around the corner. I came to blame Namir for that attack, thinking that the helicopter fired because he made himself look suspicious and it just erased from my memory the fact that the order to open fire had already been given. They were going to open fire anyway. And the one person who picked this up was Assange. On the day that he released the tape [5 April 2010] he said that helicopter opened fire because it sought permission and was given permission. And he said something like, If thats based on the rules of engagement then the rules of engagement are wrong.

Reuters asked for the entire video. The general refused, saying Reuters had to seek it under freedom of information laws.The agency did so, but its requests were denied.

During the next year, Yates checked when it might be released. All the while he and other executives from foreign news organisations continued their good faith meetings with various US generals to enhance the safety of their Baghdad staff.

On the anniversary of Namirs and Saeeds killings, Yates wanted to break the off-the-record agreement with the generals. He argued that enough time had passed for the Pentagon to give Reuters the tape. His superiors insisted the agreement be honoured. A passage in the article he wrote for the anniversary read: Video from two US Apache helicopters and photographs taken of the scene were shown to Reuters editors in Baghdad on July 25, 2007 in an off-the-record briefing.

Yates stayed in Baghdad until October 2008. He did not get the full video. Reuters continued to ask for it. Yates was reassigned to Singapore. He displayed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including noise aversion and emotional numbness. He avoided anything to do with Iraq and had trouble sleeping.

On 5 April 2010, when Wikileaks released Collateral Murder at the National Press Club in Washington, rendering himself and WikiLeaks household names (and exposing how the US prosecuted the Iraq war on the ground), Yates was off the grid,walking in Cradle Mountain national park on a Tasmanian holiday with his wife, Mary, and their children.

Namir and Saeed would have remained forgotten statistics in a war that killed countless Iraqi combatants, hundreds of thousands of civilians and 4,400-plus US soldiers had it not been for Chelsea Manning, a US military intelligence analyst in Baghdad. In February 2010 Manning, then 23, discovered the Crazy Horse 1-8 video and leaked it to WikiLeaks. The previous month Manning had leaked 700,000 classified US military documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. Assange unveiled the Crazy Horse 1-8 footage (a 17-minute edited version and the full 38-minute version remain on WikiLeaks Collateral Murder site). The video was picked up by thousands of news organisations worldwide, sparking global outrage and condemnation of US military tactics in Iraq and launching WikiLeaks as a controversial truth-teller, publisher and critical enemy of state secrecy. WikiLeaks later made public the cache of 700,000 documents.

Collateral Murder is distressing viewing. The carnage wrought by the 30mm cannon fire from the Apache helicopter is devastating. The video shows the gunner tracking Namir as he stumbles and tries to hide behind garbage before his body explodes as the rounds strike home.

The words of the crew are sickening.

There is this, after Namir and others are blown apart:

Look at those dead bastards.

Nice.

And this:

Good shootn.

Thank you.

Saeed survives the first shots. The chopper circles, Saeed in its sights, as he crawls, badly injured and desperate to live.

Come on buddy all you got to do is pick up a weapon, the gunner says, eager to finish Saeed off.

A van pulls up. Two men, including the driver (whose children are in the back), help the dying Saeed get in.

There is more urgent banter in the air about engaging the van. Crazy Horse 1-8 promptly attacks it.

Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield.

Two days after Assange released the video, Yates emerged from Cradle Mountain. It was hours before he turned on his phone and checked emails, finally learning of Collateral Murder in a local newspaper.

I thought, No, this cant be the same attack that leads on to all this other stuff that we never knew about This was the full horror Saeed had been trying to get up for roughly three minutes when this good Samaritan pulls over in this minivan and the Apache just opens fire again and just obliterates them it was totally traumatising.

Yates immediately thought: They [the US military] fucked us. They just fucked us. They lied to us. It was all lies.

The day Collateral Murder was released, a spokesman for US Central Command said an investigation of the incident shortly after it occurred found that US forces were not aware of the presence of the news staffers and thought they were engaging armed insurgents.

We regret the loss of innocent life, but this incident was promptly investigated and there was never any attempt to cover up any aspect of this engagement.

Edited into the story Reuters published about Collateral Murder was that line from Yatess first anniversary article: Video from two US Apache helicopters and photographs taken of the scene were shown to Reuters editors in Baghdad on July 25, 2007 in an off-the-record briefing.

Reuters outraged Iraqi staff were under the misapprehension Yates had seen the whole video.

I hate to admit it, but this was my chance to set the record straight and I didnt do it, Yates says. I just, I dont know, didnt have the courage to do it I shouldve picked up the phone and said to [Reuters] we cannot let this go and we have to say what we knew.

In one email to a senior editor that night, Yates wrote: I think we need to push the issue of transparency strongly with the US military When I think back to that meeting with two generals in Baghdad I feel cheated they were not being honest We met afterwards with the military several times to work on improving safety for reporters in Iraq.

The editor replied: I appreciate how awful this is for you. Take good care; rest assured that were not letting this drop.

Then Yates let it go.

How shameful it is to the military they know that theres potential war crimes on that tape

He moved to Tasmania, endured PTSD and eventually, after three inpatient stays at Austin Healths Ward 17 in Melbourne (a specialist unit for PTSD) grappled with his emotional pain the moral injury now articulated in his shoulder tattoo over the deaths of Namir and Saeed. Reuters paid for his treatment in Ward 17 and agreed to create the role of head of mental health and wellbeing strategy for him when he could no longer work as a journalist (he has now left the company).

It was in Ward 17, in 2016 and 2017, that he came to understand the moral injury he was enduring by unfairly blaming Namir for making Crazy Horse 1-8 open fire. The other element of his moral injury related to his shame at failing to protect his staff by uncovering the lax rules of engagement in the US military before they were shot and for not disclosing earlier his understanding of the extent to which the US had lied. Yates made peace with Namir and Saeed and himself.

Assange, he says, brought the truth of the killings to the world and exposed the lie that he and others had not.

What he did was 100% an act of truth-telling, exposing to the world what the war in Iraq looks like and how the US military lied.

Of the US indictment against Assange, Yates says: The US knows how embarrassing Collateral Murder is, how shameful it is to the military they know that theres potential war crimes on that tape, especially when it comes to the shooting up of the van They know that the banter between the pilots echoes the sort of language that kids would use on video games.

Fight Back, read the words inked on to Yatess left shoulder.

Amid the continuing attempt to extradite Assange to the US, many more words are likely to be spoken about the events of 12 July 2007, the lies of the US military and their exposure through Collateral Murder.

Read more here:
'All lies': how the US military covered up gunning down two journalists in Iraq - The Guardian

US prosecutors have failed to include one of WikiLeaks most shocking video revelations in the indictment against Julian Assange, a move that has brought accusations the US doesnt want its war crimes exposed in public.

Assange, an Australian citizen, is remanded and in ill health in Londons Belmarsh prison while the US tries to extradite him to face 18 charges 17 under its Espionage Act for conspiracy to receive, obtain and disclose classified information.

The charges relate largely to the US conduct of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Assanges publication of the US rules of engagement in Iraq.

The prosecution case alleges Assange risked American lives by releasing hundreds of thousands of US intelligence documents.

One of the most famous of the WikiLeaks releases was a video filmed from a US Apache helicopter, Crazy Horse 1-8, as it mowed down 11 people on 12 July 2007 in Iraq. The video starkly highlights the lax rules of engagement that allowed the killing of men who were neither engaged with nor threatening US forces.

Two of those Crazy Horse 1-8 killed in east Baghdad that day were the Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a driver/fixer, Saeed Chmagh, 40.

Their Baghdad bureau chief at the time, Dean Yates, said the US military had repeatedly lied to him and the world about what happened, and it was only when Assange released the video (which WikiLeaks posted with the title Collateral Murder) in April 2010 that the full brutal truth of the killings was exposed.

What he did was 100% an act of truth-telling, exposing to the world what the war in Iraq looks like and how the US military lied The US knows how embarrassing Collateral Murder is, how shameful it is to the military they know that theres potential war crimes on that tape, Yates said.

The Australian barrister Greg Barns is legal adviser to the Australian Assange Campaign, which works closely with Assanges UK representatives, including his legal team. The campaign lobbies Australias federal government to both press its closest ally, the US, to withdraw the charges and to push Britain to ensure Assanges safety.

He said while the US indictment against Assange did not explicitly mention Collateral Murder it is very much part of the broader prosecution case [because of what it illustrates about the US rules of engagement] and it is one of the many reasons to oppose what is happening to Assange.

Collateral Murder shows unlawful killing by Australias closest ally, Barns said.It is something we deserve to know about.Its publication was, and remains, clearly in the public interest.

The Tasmanian Greens senator Peter Whish Wilson, a founding member of the multi-party Parliamentary Friends of the Bring Julian Assange Home Group, said: The omission of the leaked Collateral Murder footage from the indictment surprised me, but on reflection of course its not in the US Governments interests to highlight their own injustices, deceit and war crimes.

The US prosecutions case is focused on indicting and extraditing Julian for putting US or Coalition lives at risk, but what about the many lives they put at risk through their supposed rules of engagement?

Collateral Murder exposed the loss of innocent lives at the hands of the US military, and the coverups, lies and deceit that refused to acknowledge this fact.

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Julian Assange indictment fails to mention WikiLeaks video that exposed US 'war crimes' in Iraq - The Guardian