Duncan Campbell: The Death of Linda Norgrove ... Beware the First Rough Draft of History
[Duncan Campbell is a freelance writer who worked for the Guardian for more than 20 years, as crime correspondent and Los Angeles correspondent.]
Linda Norgrove was "killed by her captors", "executed by the Taliban" and died after one of her kidnappers "detonated a suicide vest" when her rescuers were "within seconds" of saving her life. That certainly was what the world learned when the news first broke at the weekend of the attempt by US special forces to rescue the Scottish aid worker held hostage in Afghanistan. Now, however, a different version of how she died is emerging, with the suggestion that she may have been accidentally killed by a grenade thrown by her American rescuers.
This does not necessarily alter the initial claim made by the foreign secretary, William Hague, that the ultimate responsibility for her death lies with her captors, but it does remind us that the first official reports of a major incident may well be inaccurate and self-serving. One only has to think back to the initial coverage of the deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes in Stockwell in 2005 and Ian Tomlinson at the G20 demonstration last year to be reminded that news – that "first rough draft of history" – can sometimes be very rough indeed.
In 1996, there was an explosion on a 171 bus at the Aldwych in London. It was at a time when the IRA were still active and there seemed little doubt as to whose bomb it was. There were two young Irishmen on the bus. One, Ed O'Brien, an IRA man, was killed. The other, Brendan Woolhead, survived, although with serious head and pelvic injuries. At the press conference at Scotland Yard, it became clear that Woolhead – not named at this stage – was under police guard in hospital. He had, we heard, attempted to run away despite his serious injuries and had given a false identity. The IRA usually worked in pairs so it seemed logical that this Irishman, now with an armed guard at his hospital bedside, was part of an IRA active service unit that had been the victim of an "own goal". I was the Guardian's crime correspondent at the time and attended the police briefing and certainly that was the consensus that emerged – a consensus reflected in almost all of the next day's press coverage about the "injured Provo" in hospital and the "accomplice" under guard.
But the assumptions were wrong. Woolhead was not a bomber but a heroin addict who thus had a good reason not to divulge his true identity. When he had recovered from his injuries, he sued most of the British press for libel. Some papers settled almost immediately and he received a reported £200,000 in damages. Using some of this money, Woolhead underwent a radical opiate detoxification process in a London hospital and died of cardiac arrest during it. (His action against the Guardian, which the paper was defending, thus never came to court.)
Inevitably, when someone dies in controversial circumstances and the closest witnesses are official – whether police or armed forces – there can be a tendency, conscious or unconscious, to put a gloss on events...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Linda Norgrove was "killed by her captors", "executed by the Taliban" and died after one of her kidnappers "detonated a suicide vest" when her rescuers were "within seconds" of saving her life. That certainly was what the world learned when the news first broke at the weekend of the attempt by US special forces to rescue the Scottish aid worker held hostage in Afghanistan. Now, however, a different version of how she died is emerging, with the suggestion that she may have been accidentally killed by a grenade thrown by her American rescuers.
This does not necessarily alter the initial claim made by the foreign secretary, William Hague, that the ultimate responsibility for her death lies with her captors, but it does remind us that the first official reports of a major incident may well be inaccurate and self-serving. One only has to think back to the initial coverage of the deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes in Stockwell in 2005 and Ian Tomlinson at the G20 demonstration last year to be reminded that news – that "first rough draft of history" – can sometimes be very rough indeed.
In 1996, there was an explosion on a 171 bus at the Aldwych in London. It was at a time when the IRA were still active and there seemed little doubt as to whose bomb it was. There were two young Irishmen on the bus. One, Ed O'Brien, an IRA man, was killed. The other, Brendan Woolhead, survived, although with serious head and pelvic injuries. At the press conference at Scotland Yard, it became clear that Woolhead – not named at this stage – was under police guard in hospital. He had, we heard, attempted to run away despite his serious injuries and had given a false identity. The IRA usually worked in pairs so it seemed logical that this Irishman, now with an armed guard at his hospital bedside, was part of an IRA active service unit that had been the victim of an "own goal". I was the Guardian's crime correspondent at the time and attended the police briefing and certainly that was the consensus that emerged – a consensus reflected in almost all of the next day's press coverage about the "injured Provo" in hospital and the "accomplice" under guard.
But the assumptions were wrong. Woolhead was not a bomber but a heroin addict who thus had a good reason not to divulge his true identity. When he had recovered from his injuries, he sued most of the British press for libel. Some papers settled almost immediately and he received a reported £200,000 in damages. Using some of this money, Woolhead underwent a radical opiate detoxification process in a London hospital and died of cardiac arrest during it. (His action against the Guardian, which the paper was defending, thus never came to court.)
Inevitably, when someone dies in controversial circumstances and the closest witnesses are official – whether police or armed forces – there can be a tendency, conscious or unconscious, to put a gloss on events...