Iraq murder video leaked by officers

Wikileaks Co-founder Julian Assange says the website obtained the video of the killing of Iraqi civilians by US soldiers in 2007 from American military officers.

Press TV, 11 April 2010

Assange told Press TV that the footage "obviously passed through the hands of military officers."

"When we first got this [the video], we didn't know what we had, we thought that this was a video about Afghanistan and when we decrypted it, it was only then we started to see what was going on," Assange said.

The shocking video that was released on Monday showed US soldiers in an Apache helicopter killed dozens of Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters' employees, in cold blood.

The helicopter then shoots at a van arriving to take the injured away.

Following the barbarous murder of unarmed civilians, a crew member is heard saying, "Nice shooting."

When it emerges that two children in the van have been injured, someone else says, "Serves them right for bringing their children into a battle."

The film, in which American forces kill with the seeming detachment of video gamers, has been seen by millions on the internet since it was first aired.

Later, the Pentagon announced that there was no reason to doubt the video's authenticity.

In a leaked document, CIA has described Wikileaks as a threat to the US army. The website has released hundreds of classified military and intelligence documents over the past two years.

After releasing the footage, activists of the website complained of harassment by police and intelligence services as they prepare to release another video showing an American attack in which 97 civilians were killed in Afghanistan.

Assange claimed that a restaurant where the group met came under surveillance in March and one of the group's volunteers was detained for 21 hours by police.