A
screen grab of Michael Ware during his period as a
war correspondent with Time Magazine in the Middle
east.
Brisbane war correspondent Michael Ware is set to
reveal how he filmed a war crime in Iraq that claims
has never been seen or investigated by
authorities.
Mr
Ware, who covered the Afghanistan war from 2001 and
the Iraq war from 2003 for
Time magazine
and the US television network CNN from 2006, returned
to Brisbane in December suffering post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD).
His
harrowing near-decade of war coverages were
documented last Monday in the first of a two-part
ABC
Australian Story series,
with the second part to be broadcast tomorrow
night.
Mr
Ware tells of the incident he says he witnessed and
filmed in 2007 when working for US news giant CNN,
but claims the network decided the footage was too
graphic to go to air.
He
allages that a teenager in a remote Iraqi village run
by the militant Islamist group, al-Qaeda was carrying
a weapon to protect himself.
‘‘(The
boy) approached the house we were in and the (US)
soldiers who were watching our backs, one of them put
a bullet right in the back of his head. Unfortunately
it didn't kill him,’’ he tells
Australian Story.
‘‘We
all spent the next 20 minutes listening to his
tortured breath as he died.
"I
had this moment … that I realised despite what was
happening to this man in front of me, I'd been more
concerned with the composition of my (photo) shot
than I was with any attempt to either save him or at
the very, very least ease his passing.
"I
indeed had been indifferent as the soldiers around me
whose indifference I was attempting to
capture.’’
He
said the incident was ‘‘technically’’ a breach of the
Geneva Convention or ‘‘a small war crime if there's
such a thing’’.
Mr
Ware’s friend, journalist John Martinkus who now
teaches media studies at the University of Tasmania,
returned to Baghdad in 2007 where he had worked
previously for the SBS’s Dateline program.
‘‘One
of the first things he (Ware) showed me was that tape
and he was watching it over and over and over again;
he was really obsessed with it,’’ Mr Martinkus
said.
‘‘Part
of him was like ‘how could I just stand by and watch
that happen’. It was a really horrible stark moral
choice that he faced and he still wrestles with
that,’’ he said.
He
said CNN owned the footage and Mr Ware therefore was
not free to give it to anyone else.
Mr
Martinkus, like Mr Ware, was kidnapped during his
time in Iraq.
‘‘People
really need to understand what Mick’s been through.
The footage should be shown so people know how
callously US soldiers treat the Iraqis,’’ he
said.
Mr
Ware’s parents, Gail and Len of the outer-Brisbane
suburb of Ferny Grove said their son’s PTSD symptoms
include nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia and mood
swings. His son, Jack, aged 7 is helping his
rehabilitation in Brisbane, they
said.
After
leaving Brisbane Grammar School, Mr Ware completed a
law degree at the University of Queensland and spent
a year as Associate to then-president of the
Queensland Court of Appeals, Tony Fitzgerald who
presided over the Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption
in the Queensland government in the
1980s.
Mr
Ware’s graphic and unbiased reports made him a
house-hold name overseas but he’s still a fairly
well-kept secret at home. He considered Iraqi
insurgents and US troops as friends and lived in
Baghdad surrounded by his own private army which
helped him survive several
bombings.
He
witnessed his first suicide bomb attack in Iraq when
Australian ABC cameraman, Paul Moran was killed and
reporter, Eric Campbell was wounded in
2003.
Mr
Ware said three of his Iraqi staff were kidnapped and
tortured by al-Qaeda because of him but he managed to
get them back.
He
said ‘‘a death sentence’’ hung on any locals if it
was revealed that they worked for him or for CNN or
Time magazine.
Australian
Story is on ABC1 at 8pm tomorrow.