AMMAN, Jordan, July 11 (UPI) -- The family of a Jordanian journalist killed in U.S. shelling of Baghdad a day before it fell in April 2003 will sue the White House and the Pentagon.
The widow and daughter of the Qatari al-Jazeera television correspondent Tarek Ayyoub will file a lawsuit through the American judiciary on charges that the shelling of the news agency's offices in Baghdad was pre-meditated and intentional, daily al-Dustour reported.
The paper quoted the lawyer of Ayyoub's widow, Hamdi Rifai, as saying "he will start the procedures of the case against U.S. President Georges Bush in his capacity as the general commander of the American army who gave orders to shell specific targets in Baghdad, including the al-Jazeera office where Tarek Ayyoub was killed as a result of American bombardment on April 8, 2003."
Ayyoub noted the shelling of the al-Jazeera office was initially believed to have been unintentional, before saying revelations published by Britain's Daily Mirror that Bush informed British Prime Minister Tony Blair of his wish to strike al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha "suggest that the U.S. could be involved in premeditated shelling of al-Jazeera's office in Baghdad."
Ayyoub pointed out that the lawsuit will be filed before an American court.
Tarek Ayyoub was the first journalist to be killed in Iraq hours before U.S. forces seized the city.
According to statistics by the International Committee for Protecting Journalists, some 67 journalists from different nationalities have been killed in Iraq since 2003, including 33 slain in Baghdad either at the hands of coalition forces or Iraqi gunmen.
