Maribel Permuy has died, a woman who was much more than the mother of the José Couso Galician Chamber. His death forces us to remember his tireless struggle to obtain justice for his son, murdered in Baghdad by US troops in 2003, during Iraq's illegal invasion for US armies and the United Kingdom.
That invasion and illegal occupation of the country was based on two great lies, already known at that time, and that would end up confirming a few years later. Neither Iraq had weapons of mass destruction nor the Sadam Hussein regime maintained any relationship with Al Qaeda.
However, a large part of the Western media did not fulfill the main duty of their trade: doubt, ask questions, investigate and avoid assuming as the only valid information that comes from the great offices (in this case, of Washington and London). This standardized propaganda was the original sin that triggered the death of thousands of Iraqis only in the first weeks of bombing, and also that of Maribel Permuy's son.
War crime
We witnessed the murder of José Couso, with whom we had been sharing weeks of hard work in Baghdad. In less than three hours, on the morning of April 8, 2003, the US troops attacked three venues from the international press – that of Al Jazeera, that of the Abu Dhabi channel and the Palestine hotel – and killed three journalists: Tarek Ayoub, Taras Prosyuk and José Couso. These last two were at the Hotel Palestine, where we were staying more than two hundred people who worked for European and American media, and where there was no threat to the troops that invaded the Iraqi capital.
Despite this, an American tank turned his canyon to our hotel, asked permission to act, waited ten minutes – having us – obtained green light from his superiors and fired a fragmentation projectile against the fifteenth floor of the Palestine, where a Reuters team filmed from his balcony and sent those images in real time to numerous media from all over the world. That retransmission was immediately interrupted.
A fragment of the projectile was almost in the act to the Ukrainian reporter Taras Prosyuk, of the International Reuters agency, and wounded several more, including José Couso, who recorded with his camera from a balcony of the nineteenth -century floor. Three hours later, Couso died in a hospital in the Iraqi capital.
The consequences of those US attacks were immediate and caused an informative darkness until April 9. The journalists had to shuffle security options, transfer the injured to different hospitals and cry our dead. Therefore, there is not a single image of the following hours, in which US troops advanced to occupy the center of Baghdad.
The American tank that killed José Couso could see us perfectly from the bridge from which he shot us, and Judge Santiago Pedraz proved years later, in an inspection on-site. In addition, Washington knew perfectly that the international press stayed at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, as the Secretary of State, Colin Powell later recognized.
Maribel defended justice for cousos, aware that impunity could sit a dangerous precedent against freedom of information
The fight
When we returned from Baghdad we met Maribel Permuy, Couso's mother. We do not forget your first words. Instead of exhibiting his pain, Maribel insisted on the importance of defending justice for his son, aware that the normalization of what happened could sit a dangerous precedent against freedom of information, as it has happened. As soon as a few weeks had passed since he had received his son's lifeless body and already showed the determination to work until the murder of José was tried by the courts.
Thus began an unequal struggle, full of great obstacles. Governments despised her and others breached what they had promised. “They have used me,” I would regret later. Aznar came bad that neither she nor the rest of her family would accept a medal and a check in exchange for her silence. The then president of the Government could not prevent Couso from becoming a symbol more of the unreasonableness that supposed to have involved Spain in that damn war.
Maribel was not alone. He had her four children – who, like her, promised to fight so that the crime against her brother was not unpunished – and with numerous companions and friends. Behind, and even more important, thousands and thousands of citizens.
If a war crime is allowed to be unpunished, we will be paying the ground for more and greater abuses in the future
Maribel Permuy
The death of José Couso was not an accident, nor a “gaje of the trade.” It was a premeditated attack without any justification. This is how she always repeated, in all her public interventions, in all concentrations before the US embassy, in all acts demanding justice from the different Spanish governments, until today.
Maribel was soon aware that he didn't fight just for José's memory. Trying to prevent his murder from being unpunished meant defending freedom of the press and the need to always respect international laws. “If there is no justice for José, a dangerous precedent will be created,” he used to tell us.
“If the law is allowed today, that a war crime is unpunished, we will be paying the land for more and greater abuses in the future,” he repeated. You just have to look towards Palestine, where Israeli attacks have killed more than two hundred journalists in the last twenty -two months, to be aware of the importance of what it defended.
You just have to look today at Palestine to understand the importance of what she defended
The judicial process
Paradoxically, and despite fighting Goliath, justice also proved him right. The different magistrates of the National Court who took over the case – and, especially, Santiago Pedraz – advanced in the investigation, despite the US pressures and the obstacles of the Spanish Prosecutor's Office itself.
Judge Pedraz gathered testimonies and evidence that allowed him to conclude that there were solid indications that co -death was a war crime. From his office a search and capture order came out against three of the US military who opened fire against the Palestine Hotel.
The magistrate traveled to Baghdad in 2011 and ratified on-site Each and every one of his suspicions. “To me the word that I have left of these years is” dignity “because they have tried to none us, they have tried to cancel us and have not succeeded,” said Maribel Permuy. “A lot of anonymous people have continued to support us and we will continue with our fight,” he said on the tenth anniversary of his son's murder.
Despite the promises, no Spanish government has recovered the Universal Justice Law nor has the reform that allowed the murder of Coyo to be unpunished
Universal justice
Only a few months later, the Government of the PP of Mariano Rajoy changed on the march the rules of the game. With its absolute majority imposed a legal reform that ended the call UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION LAW – limited in 2009 by the PSOE government- and drastically restricted the ability of Spanish judges to prosecute crimes committed outside their territory.
“The flexo cannot be kept on,” Judge Pedraz wrote in his car, in 2015, regretting the impossibility of keeping investigation open after the reform of the law.
In the following years, and despite the promises of several parties, no Spanish government has recovered the Universal Justice Law or reversed the reform that allowed the murder of José Couso to be unpunished. Despite this, Maribel Permuy He kept fighting To achieve justice for your child, to defend freedom of information, to protect the application of international law, aware that impunity settles the law of the strongest.
In July last year another bad news arrived: the European Court endorsed the Couso Case Archive for Spanish Justice. The double standard in the application of the laws and the right of Quita and Pon are characteristics that define our news.
In a moment of enormous setback in rights and freedoms in many parts of the world, in a context of genocide contemplated and consented in real time, the voices of mothers such as Maribel are real and humanity in the face of the brutality of weapons and facing the complicity of governments that facilitate warmongering, impunity or inaction before mass crimes.
If it is always difficult to say goodbye, telling Maribel Permuy even more. This mother Ferrola Cortaje Perseverante gave us all a lesson. He lived with the sadness for the murder of José Couso but also with the joy caused by his children and grandchildren. Citizenship in general and the journalistic profession in particular owe a lot. His fight was not only for José. It was for everyone.
That's why we can only tell you goodbye in one way: thanks, Maribel, infinite thanks and until ever.
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Carlos Hernández and Olga Rodríguez covered the Iraq war from Baghdad and, together with the reporters Jon Sistiaga and Jesús Quiñonero, declared before the National Court as witnesses of the murder of José Couso in Baghdad