US soldier charged over leak of Iraq shootings video

An American soldier suspected of leaking video footage of a US Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed two employees of the Reuters news agency has been charged, the military said yesterday.

Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, held in a military jail in Kuwait since last month in connection with the July 2007 attack, faces two charges of misconduct, said a statement released by the US army in Baghdad.

The first charge is for violating army regulations by "transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorised software to a classified computer system," the statement said.

WikiLeaks, a whistleblowing website, released in April the video that showed the Reuters employees being gunned down by the US helicopter three years ago.

Pt Manning, 22, is accused in a second charge of "communicating, transmitting and delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source".

WikiLeaks at the time said it obtained the video "from a number of military whistleblowers" and decrypted it. It posted the video at collateralmurder.org.

The gun camera footage included audio conversations between Apache pilots and controllers in which they identified the men on a Baghdad street as armed insurgents and asked for permission to open fire.

Two of the men were later identified as Reuters employees Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh.

After the leaked and graphic footage was released the White House described the incident as "tragic," insisting that US forces in war zones take pains to avoid civilian casualties.

At least two individuals in the video seemed to be carrying weapons but most were unarmed. The Apache pilots also appeared to mistake a camera carried by one of the Reuters employees as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher or RPG.

At one point, the Apache pilots told controllers they had spotted "five to six individuals with AK-47s" and asked for permission to "engage."

The Apache pilots then opened fire with the helicopter's cannon, with one of them then saying there are a "bunch of bodies lying there."