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October 7th,
2007 - Blackwater Unprovoked, 17 Killed, Iraqi Probe Finds News article by Agence France
Presse 1st news article by the
Los Angeles Times |
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Blackwater Unprovoked, 17 Killed,
Iraqi Probe Finds By Agence France Presse October 7, 2007 Baghdad - US security
contractor Blackwater was unprovoked when it opened fire on civilians in
Baghdad three weeks ago, killing 17 people and wounding 22, an Iraqi probe
into the shooting has found. The Iraqi government would
now take "judicial measures to punish the company," government
spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement on Sunday. "The investigation
committee appointed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ... has finished its
inquiry and has found that there was no evidence that the convoy of
Blackwater came under fire directly or indirectly," he said. "It was not touched
even by a stone," the statement said. It gave the toll from the
shootings as 17 dead, considerably higher than the previous toll according to
which at least 10 people had been killed. The statement said 22 people had
been wounded. "Employees of the
company violated the rules governing use of force by security
companies," the statement said. "They have committed a crime and
should be punished under the law." The report came hours after
a joint US-Iraqi commission examining the work of private security firms in
Iraq held its first meeting in Baghdad. The commission is looking at
the September 16 incident involving Blackwater as well as at the wider
business of private security contractors in Iraq. Blackwater maintains its men
were legitimately responding to an ambush while protecting a US State
Department convoy, but they are widely accused of firing indiscriminately
into crowded Nisoor Square. Sunday's meeting was
co-chaired by Iraqi Defence Minister Abdel Qader Mohammed Jassim and the US
embassy's Patricia Butenis. The commission is comprised
of five embassy representatives, three from the US military and eight Iraqis. "The two sides agreed
to continue their coordination and to complete the process of inquiry in
order to prevent the recurrence of any incidents in the future," said a
statement from the co-chairs. The commission will issue a
report with recommendations to the Iraqi and US governments aimed at
improving procedures so that the work of security contractors does not
endanger the public, it said. It did not say when the
report would be issued, but an embassy spokeswoman has told AFP that the
commission must first review the findings of a separate probe by the State
Department's regional security office. US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's envoy, Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, is meanwhile conducting
an overall review of how the State Department conducts its protective
security detail operations in Iraq. Based on his initial
findings, Rice on Friday tightened control of Blackwater's operations in
Iraq, ordering security agents from the State Department to accompany every
convoy. The State Department said on
Thursday it had ceded the lead role in the investigation of Blackwater, which
is accused of involvement in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq, to the FBI. US Defence Secretary Robert
Gates has also launched a review on his department's use of private security
contractors. Copyright © 2007 AFP. External link: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j4L1VeJBtnJF5C_M43uS-2xd0peg State Dept. ignored
Blackwater warnings Diplomats had raised concerns about guards’ endangering of Iraqi
civilians, but the complaints got little attention. By Paul Richter Los Angeles Times October 7, 2007 Washington - The State
Department, which is facing growing criticism of its policy on private
security contractors, overlooked repeated warnings from U.S. diplomats in the
field that guards were endangering Iraqi civilians and undermining U.S.
efforts to win support from the population, according to current and former
U.S. officials. Ever since the contractors
were granted immunity from Iraqi courts in June 2004 by the U.S.-led
occupation authority, diplomats have cautioned that the decision to do so was
"a bomb that could go off at any time," said one former U.S.
official. But State Department
leadership, unable to field U.S. troops or in-house personnel to guard its
team, has clung to an approach that shielded the contractors from criminal
liability, in the hope of ensuring continued protection to operate in the
violent countryside. The procedures have come
under critical scrutiny since a Sept. 16 shooting involving contractors for
Blackwater USA, the State Department's main security contractor, killed at
least 11 Iraqis and set off a series of American and Iraqi investigations. On Friday, in a tacit
acknowledgment of the policy's shortcomings, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice ordered drastic increases in supervision of the security contractors.
Meanwhile, the House, flatly rejecting the current approach, on Thursday approved
in a 389-30 vote legislation that would subject contractors to U.S. criminal
law. The developments - and the
dramatically heightened attention to violence involving security contractors
- have not surprised current and former officials who have served in Iraq and
seen incidents that injured Iraqis and destroyed their property. "It's about time,"
said Janessa Gans, who was a U.S. official in Iraq for nearly two years,
describing her reaction to news that the Iraqi government was threatening to
expel Blackwater in the aftermath of the Sept. 16 shooting. Gans said that during her
travels around the country she saw heavily armed contract guards frighten
Iraqi civilians and destroy their property, and she was shocked that they
appeared to have so little accountability and that the Iraqis often found it
difficult to obtain justice or compensation. Gans, who related her
experiences in an interview and in an opinion article published in Saturday's
Times, described one incident. In 2005, a heavily armored Chevy Suburban at
the head of her U.S. convoy smashed into a tiny car carrying an elderly man,
a younger woman and three frightened children. When she objected, the
contractors pointed out that they were trained to treat all Iraqis as
potential terrorists. Gans said she replied: "If they weren't terrorists
before, they certainly are now." Several other officials
formerly assigned to duty in Iraq agreed to discuss concerns about security
procedures but insisted on anonymity because they still are employed by the
government and are not authorized to express their views. Some officials who
have had similar experiences while at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad declined to
describe them out of concern that they could be identified through the
details of their accounts. Their views of Blackwater
and other security contractors are at odds with the descriptions in recent
weeks from Rice and other top State Department officials, who have praised
the guards as providing effective service under dangerous conditions. Blackwater's chief executive
noted last week that no U.S. official has been killed under Blackwater's
protection. Nonetheless, concerns have
been voiced at times even by the most senior U.S. officials in Iraq. Former
U.S. ambassador to Iraq John D. Negroponte, now the deputy secretary of
State, had been overheard urging contractors to slow down and take more care
as they careened through the streets. "He was frequently
exasperated," Gans said. "He would say, 'Is that necessary?' " Gans said she complained to
high-level embassy officials. Other current and former officials said that
the concerns frequently were discussed among embassy staff and were
acknowledged by some members of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which
oversees contractors for the State Department. But the complaints and
concerns received little high-level attention, for several reasons, said
diplomats who served in Iraq. In the crisis atmosphere of Iraq, the security
problems seemed less urgent than other issues. In addition, even staff members
who were uneasy with the arrangement were ambivalent because they wanted
aggressive protection when they felt personally endangered. When leaving the gates of
the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, "you want the biggest, meanest guys in
the world protecting you," said a U.S. official who served in Baghdad
and has been moved to another post in the region. The private security
contractors working for the State Department have operated under murky legal
guidelines. While U.S. laws apply to contractors working for the Pentagon,
workers for the State Department do not fall clearly under American or Iraqi
law, allowing some to escape punishment for wrongdoing. In May 2005, an Iraqi
cabdriver with two passengers in the back seat was traveling down a broad
thoroughfare when a five-car U.S. convoy carrying U.S. officials heading back
to the Green Zone approached from a side street. The driver, Mohammed Nouri
Hattab, 34, stopped about 50 feet from the convoy, but bullets ripped into
his Opel, killing one passenger and striking Hattab's shoulder. "There was no
warning," Hattab, who suffered lasting damage to his arm, later told a
reporter. "It was a sudden attack." Hattab was forced to go on
disability leave from his Oil Ministry job at half pay and struggled without
success to get compensation from the U.S. government. Two Blackwater employees
were fired for failing to follow proper procedures in the incident. They were
flown back to the United States after an investigation by embassy security
personnel, but faced no subsequent prosecution. The procedure was similar in
a well-known incident last Christmas Eve, when a Blackwater employee left a
party and fatally shot a bodyguard to Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi.
Within 36 hours, security officials investigated the case and whisked the
shooter back to the United States. In the wake of the Sept. 16
shootings, Justice Department officials are looking into the Christmas Eve
case to see if further action is warranted. Many of the current and
former U.S. officials said nearly all of the contractors they dealt with were
highly professional. But in the violent atmosphere of Iraq, even a small
percentage of "renegades" can inflict enormous damage, some said. Iraqi politicians frequently
have complained about the behavior of American security contractors, said
Gans, who believes the constant friction undermined American efforts to
improve relations. "There are so many
things going on in Iraq that seemed unfair," said Gans, now a visiting
professor at Principia College in Illinois. "But this piece of it was
unbelievable." State Department leaders,
appearing last week before a House committee investigating the issue, said
that practical considerations had led to their decision to rely on private
contractors for diplomatic security. Faced with a need for
protection and no access to the limited numbers of U.S. troops, the State
Department had a choice between waiting at least 18 months to assemble a
sufficient force of State Department staff security agents or hiring
contractors. In addition, they said they did not believe at first that the
Iraq mission would be long-lived. While contractors are
expensive, a single Bureau of Diplomatic Security agent costs nearly $500,000
a year, said Richard J. Griffin, assistant secretary of State for diplomatic
security. Peter W. Singer, a Brookings
Institution scholar who has studied the issue, said that though diplomats in
the field clearly "have been upset with this," they have felt they
had no other choice. "It's not like there
was ever a high-level review of this," he said. U.S. officials in charge
"didn't want to make the hard choices. So they outsourced the hard
choices." Times staff writers Borzou
Daragahi in Beirut, T. Christian Miller in Santa Rosa, Maggie Farley at the
United Nations, Tina Susman in Baghdad and Laura King in Islamabad
contributed to this report. External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-blackwater7oct07,1,4799501.story Widow of Iraqi
guard still awaits compensation A U.S. sum offered to her in the killing of her husband by a
Blackwater USA employee dwindled from $250,000 to $15,000, according to State
Department documents. By Tina Susman and Raheem Salman Los Angeles Times October 7, 2007 Baghdad - The widow of an
Iraqi vice presidential guard shot to death on Christmas Eve by a Blackwater
USA employee said today she has not yet received any compensation. Umm Sajjad said the office
of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, for whom her husband was working
when he died, was handling the case and told her that they had rejected the
proposed sum as too low. State Department documents say that Blackwater and
the U.S. State Department had agreed that $15,000 was a fair amount. An official in Mehdi's
office said the vice president was seeking $100,000 for the family. The
official said $20,000 had been sent but that it had not been given to the
guard's family because the office felt it was too little. The official
requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the sensitive
topic. There was no immediate
response to an e-mailed request for information sent early today to
Blackwater's spokeswoman, Anne Tyrrell. The slaying of Sajjad's
husband, Raheem Khalif Hulaichi, by an allegedly drunk Blackwater employee
has been cited by critics of the company and the State Department as an example
of how Blackwater was allowed to operate with virtual impunity in Iraq.
Details of the case came to light last week as congressional hearings were
held into Blackwater, whose guards are accused of killing at least 11 Iraqis
on Sept. 16 at a crowded Baghdad intersection. Blackwater says its guards
fired in self-defense after being ambushed. Iraqi witnesses say they fired
without provocation. The congressional hearings
delved into the case of Hulaichi, who was on guard duty the night of Dec. 24,
2006. Witness accounts contained in documents presented at the hearing
indicate that the Blackwater guard smelled of alcohol and was visibly drunk
after the shooting, which took place outside the vice president's compound
inside Baghdad's Green Zone. Hulaichi, 33, was shot in
the head and died, leaving a widow and two sons, ages 6 and 10. The
Blackwater employee claimed he shot in self-defense, but he was fired from
his job. He was flown out of Iraq by U.S. officials and never charged with a
crime. "I heard that there was
going to be compensation from the security company, but so far nothing has
been received. Not a single penny," said Umm Sajjad. She spoke in an
interview from her small house in Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite Muslim slum
in northeastern Baghdad. She said she wanted only
enough money to put her sons through school and buy a house. Currently, they
rent a 225-square-foot dwelling in Sadr City. According to State
Department documents, a U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad, who was not
identified, initially recommended that Blackwater pay $250,000 to the guard's
family and then lowered the sum to $100,000. Both amounts were dismissed as
too high by the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, and an amount
of $15,000 was agreed upon. Because the incident
occurred about the same time that ousted leader Saddam Hussein was being
prepared for execution, it was barely noted in the local media. One brief
mention on local TV news blamed the shooting on a "drunken U.S.
soldier." An e-mail from a Blackwater
official in Baghdad to another company official noted the error with some
relief. "At least the ID of the shooter will take the heat off of
us," said the Dec. 27, 2006 message, which was contained in documents
compiled for last week's hearings. The names of the correspondents were
blacked out. External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq8oct08,0,4329151.story |