Twenty years have passed since the first corporal Manuel (fictional name) was deployed in Iraq as part of the Multinational Brigade Plus Ultra II, sent by the government of José María Aznar in support of the American invasion. It was 126 days, between December 16, 2003, and April 20, 2004—until the new president, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, ordered the withdrawal of Spanish troops—during which he acted “without damage to his military honor and with clear risk to his life,” according to his service record. A ruling by the National Court has just recognized that the traumatic experience he lived through in that war, an invisible wound that has not healed since then, has now forced him to hang up his uniform. Manuel belonged to the UOE II, the Special Operations Unit based in Rabasa (Alicante), an elite group of the Spanish Army whose members, known as Green Berets, are trained for the most delicate missions: infiltration, reconnaissance, evacuation of civilians, or raids, always acting in small groups and in hostile territory.
On April 4, 2004, the general in charge of the brigade, Fulgencio Coll, ordered a team of snipers to accompany him to the Nayaf outpost, which was being harassed by 700 members of the so-called Mahdi Army, the militia of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr, after rumors spread that one of their lieutenants had been arrested by the Spanish. Manuel, then a soldier, carried an Accuracy precision rifle, with 7.62 ammunition, a British-made weapon with a telescopic sight and night vision scope, designed to shoot human targets up to 1.5 kilometers away. His partner, the first corporal, carried a Barret, with 12.70 caliber projectiles to penetrate armor. The third member of the group was a first sergeant who served as the leader and liaison. They traveled by helicopter to the Tegucigalpa base, of the Honduran contingent, and from there, aboard a BMR (medium armored wheeled vehicle), to the Al Andalus base, which was shared by Spaniards and Salvadorans.
According to the report written by the first sergeant in charge of the team, General Coll ordered them to “open fire on all clearly identified threats.” The Spanish snipers positioned themselves on the roof of a building adjacent to the base, from where they could target a nearby hospital, the origin of the shots that had killed an American civilian from the CPA, the provisional occupation government, and injured a Salvadoran soldier. At 1:00 a.m. on April 7, the report continues, American soldiers warned of possible enemies on the Olympic arches of a pool south of the base. With night observation devices, they observed “two discontinuities on the trampoline walkway” and opened fire. “Immediately, all the lights around the pool were turned off,” with no apparent movement. However, three hours later, a 60-millimeter mortar grenade hit the building facade and another fell four meters from where they were sleeping. Fortunately, “it embedded in the cement and did not explode.”
The Spaniards took refuge on the lower floor to rest, but went up regularly for observation tasks, patrolling the roof, where there were also Salvadoran soldiers with an M60 machine gun, American marines, and CPA personnel. The next morning, the bomb disposal team removed the grenade that had fallen near them without exploding. At 6:22 p.m. on April 8, supposed spies from the Mahdi Army were located east of the outpost. They opened fire to scare them off, and one of them fled on a motorcycle inside the base perimeter. Manuel fired two warning shots and, as the man did not stop, he shot and killed him with a moving shot from his Acuraccy rifle, 350 meters away. “Confirmed hit, picked up the next day by local medical personnel,” the military report states.
The body of the Iraqi lay in front of Manuel for 24 hours, and he had to observe his lifeless victim. The image was seared into his memory. The following day, “the command openly began to question the decision [to shoot the alleged spy], creating a guilt that he has been carrying since then,” according to his lawyer. As a result, he lives in a state of insecurity, anxiety, and permanent stress, which led him to “attempt to take his own life.” On March 19, the Ministry of Defense ordered the retirement of the first corporal, declaring him permanently unfit due to psychophysical conditions unrelated to service; that is, the anxious depressive disorder and chronic post-traumatic stress he suffers from, according to the Medical Perital Board’s ruling, would not have any connection to his activities in the Army or the events he experienced in Iraq.
However, the three doctors who examined him linked his condition—anxiety, sleep disorders, aggressiveness, suicidal thoughts—to his experiences in the operational zone, where he was “exposed to extreme situations, saw his life in danger, and killed a person on orders from superiors, being later questioned for it.” Upon his return to Spain, he “had nightmares” and “could not talk to his friends about what had happened.” Through the Suárez-Valdés Legal Office, Manuel appealed the Ministry of Defense’s decision to the National Court, which ruled in his favor. In a judgment issued on September 12, the judge of the Central Contentious-Administrative Court No. 3 states that he has “no doubt” that Manuel’s disorders are not due to a supposed pre-existing psychological vulnerability, as insinuated by the military medical tribunal, “but to extreme experiences that almost no one can escape.”
The judgment recognizes that “the characteristics of the traumatic event (combat exposure), the inability to verbalize what happened upon return from Iraq, and the long latency between the onset of disorders and treatment darken the prognosis and therapeutic outcome.” But the conclusion is clear: “The intensity, duration, and proximity of exposure to the traumatic event are per se the causes” of post-traumatic stress and depression. After criticizing the lack of motivation in the Defense Ministry’s resolution declaring his incapacity as “unrelated to service,” the judge annuls it and grants Manuel retirement due to psychophysical conditions “in the line of duty,” which means he will be entitled to an extraordinary pension. However, the judgment is still appealable.
