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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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August 7th,
2009 - Iraqis Speak of Random Killings Committed by Blackwater Guards |
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Iraqis Speak
of Random Killings Committed by Private Blackwater Guards By Oliver August The Times August 7, 2009 Guards employed by
Blackwater, the US security company, shot Iraqis and killed victims in
allegedly unprovoked and random attacks, it was claimed yesterday. A Virginia court also
received sworn statements from former Blackwater employees yesterday alleging
that Erik Prince, the company’s founder, “views himself as a Christian
crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the
globe”. They also accused the
company of following a policy of deliberate killings and arms dealing and of
employing people unfit or improperly trained to handle lethal weaponry. In Baghdad yesterday, some
Iraqis said they believed that the case was a last chance for justice and an
opportunity for America to divorce the behaviour of its military from the
private guards. Farid Walid, who was shot in
Nisour Square two years ago during a massacre that killed 17 Iraqis, said:
“Everybody here knows of cases where Blackwater guards shot innocent people
without a second thought. They are a symbol of the occupation. Nobody will
forget. But Iraqis might think at least a little differently of America if
the killers are put in prison.” Mr Walid is among several
Iraqis behind an attempt to take Blackwater to court in the US, helped by an
American lawyer, Susan Burke, and her local legal team. Umm Sajjad, whose husband
was allegedly shot by Blackwater guards, said: “The US forces have come to
our neighbourhood many times and they never harmed anybody. It was Blackwater
that wanted to harm people.” Her husband was working as a
security guard at the Iraqi Media Network, a state broadcaster, when a
Blackwater convoy passed them one day in 2007. She says that without warning,
the Iraqis were fired upon and three of them were killed. The Blackwater
convoy never stopped or sent anyone to check what happened. Umm Sajjad said: “I was told
that there was no exchange of fire or any other reason to provoke them to
shoot at my husband and his colleagues. They were on a high building but they
didn’t have weapons in their hands.” Other families have tales of
shootings allegedly committed by Blackwater, which has since changed its
name. Abu Suhad lost his daughter
in 2007 when she was driving her car near the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in
central Baghdad. He said: “Eyewitnesses told me that four white Blackwater cars
went by her. Three were already past when the last one shot her in the head
at close range and killed her. The eyewitnesses said they were very
bewildered why they shot her. The bullet came from the driver’s window, which
means that he got next to her when he shot her. The bullet entered from under
the ear and left from the upper side of her skull. There were bits of her
hair and skin on the car roof.” Mr Walid remembers the
Nisour Square shooting on September 16, 2007 - for Iraqis one of the blacker days
of the US occupation. Claiming to have come under fire, Blackwater guards
stopped in the middle of a large roundabout and began shooting in all
directions. “I left my car and ran away
to hide in a petrol station, which was made of concrete. The shooting was so
heavy it was like rain,” he said. “I saw lots of people getting shot. The
driver who had been in front of me died and his wife fell out of the car. Her
child was killed as well. The shooting went on for about ten minutes.” Iraqis still find it hard to
believe that companies such as Blackwater were given such free rein. Until
the start of this year its employees were immune from prosecution in the
country. In another alleged incident
involving the company, Ali Husamaldeen was walking in Wathba Square, central
Baghdad, on September 9, 2007, when he was felled by a single gunshot.
Passers-by reported a Blackwater helicopter overhead, from which they say the
fatal shot was fired. According to his mother, Umm Ali, her son was unarmed
and in no way a threat. Leqaa al-Yaseen, an MP,
said: “I believe the US authorities have the main responsibility for what
happened because Blackwater came to Iraq with their permission. Regarding
Blackwater smuggling weapons into Iraq, that suggests the US forces didn’t know
about it at the time. But I think they did know. “The tragedies that happened
to our Iraqi people at Nisour Square and other places are not separate from
the US forces in Iraq. The US Government is trying to avoid responsibility by
blaming private companies.” Officials in Baghdad have
told The Times that they are continuing to investigate allegations similar to
those made in the US against Blackwater. Major-General Fathel
al-Barwari, commander of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces, said he was
gathering evidence of illegal weapons trading by the company. As a result,
Blackwater could also face criminal prosecution in Iraq, where it is now
banned, but other companies connected to Mr Prince still operate. Tahseen Al-Shekhli, for the
defence ministry in Baghdad, said: “If the allegations of illegally smuggling
weapons into Iraq are proven, the Iraqi authorities will definitely take
legal measures against this company.” The Iraqi Government has
tightened up rules for private security companies in recent years. External link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6742135.ece US Still Paying Blackwater
Millions By Jeremy Scahill The Nation August 7, 2009 Just days before two former
Blackwater employees alleged in sworn statements filed in federal court that
the company's owner, Erik Prince, "views himself as a Christian crusader
tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,"
the Obama administration extended a contract with Blackwater for more than
$20 million for "security services" in Iraq, according to federal
contract data obtained by The Nation. The State Department contract is
scheduled to run through September 3. In May, the State Department announced
it was not renewing Blackwater's Iraq contract, and the Iraqi government has
refused to issue the company an operating license. "They are still there,
but we are transitioning them out," a State Department official told The
Nation. According to the State Department, the $20 million represents an
increase on an aviation contract that predates the Obama administration. Despite its scandal-plagued
track record, Blackwater (which has rebranded itself as Xe) continues to have
a presence in Iraq, trains Afghan forces on US contracts and provides
government-funded training for military and law enforcement inside the United
States. The company is also actively bidding on other government contracts,
including in Afghanistan, where the number of private contractors is
swelling. According to federal contracting records reviewed by The Nation,
since President Barack Obama took office in January the State Department has
contracted with Blackwater for more than $174 million in "security
services" alone in Iraq and Afghanistan and tens of millions more in
"aviation services." Much of this money stems from existing
contracts from the Bush era that have been continued by the Obama
administration. While Obama certainly inherited a mess when it came to
Blackwater's entrenchment in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has continued the
widespread use of armed private contractors in both countries. Blackwater's
role may be slowly shrinking, but its work is continuing through companies
such as DynCorp and Triple Canopy. "These contracts with
Blackwater need to stop," says Representative Jan Schakowsky, an
Illinois Democrat and a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
"There's already enough evidence of gross misconduct and serious
additional allegations against the company and its owner to negate any
possibility that this company should have a presence in Iraq, Afghanistan or
any conflict zone - or any contract with the US government." On July 24 the Army signed
an $8.9 million contract with Blackwater's aviation wing, Presidential
Airways, for aviation services at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Bagram,
home to a massive - and expanding - US-run prison, has been the subject of
intense criticism from the ACLU and human rights groups for holdings hundreds
of prisoners without charges and denying them habeas corpus and access to the
International Committee of the Red Cross. The Blackwater aviation
contract for Afghanistan is described as "Air Charter for Things"
and "Nonscheduled Chartered Passenger Air Transportation." The
military signed an additional $1.4 million contract that day for
"Nonscheduled" passenger transportation in Afghanistan. These
payments are part of aviation contracts dating back to the Bush era, and
continued under Obama, that have brought Blackwater tens of millions of
dollars in Afghanistan since January. In May, Blackwater operatives on
contract with the Department of Defense allegedly killed an unarmed Afghan
civilian and wounded two others. Moreover, Presidential Airways is being sued
by the families of US soldiers killed in a suspicious crash in Afghanistan in
November 2004. The sworn affidavits from
the former Blackwater employees, first reported by The Nation on August 3,
have sparked renewed calls on Capitol Hill for the Obama administration to
cancel all business with Blackwater. "I believe that the behavior of Xe,
its leadership, and many of its employees, puts our government and military
personnel, as well as our military and diplomatic objectives, at serious
risk," Schakowsky wrote in an August 6 letter to Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton. "Given this company's history of abuse and in light of
recent allegations, I urge you not to award further contracts to Xe and its
affiliates and to review all existing contracts with this company."
Schakowsky sent a similar letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Meanwhile, VoteVets.org, a
leading veterans' organization, has called on the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to
investigate the allegations contained in the sworn declarations submitted in
the Eastern District of Virginia on August 3. VoteVets.org, which has more
than 100,000 members, also appealed to the House and Senate Judiciary
Committees to "immediately hold hearings, and make recommendations on a
new legal structure" to hold private military contractors accountable
for alleged crimes. "Given the charges made
against Xe and Erik Prince in these sworn statements, which include smuggling
and use of illegal arms inside of Iraq, as well as the encouraged murder of
innocent Iraqis, it is essential that these loopholes be closed,
retroactively, so that Xe, Prince, and his employees cannot escape proper
prosecution in the United States now or in the future," wrote the
group's chair Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran, in a letter to Senator John
Kerry and other lawmakers. "It is absolutely crucial that we show Iraqis
and the rest of the world that no matter who you are or how big your company
is, you will be held accountable for your conduct - especially when in a war
zone. Failure to do so only emboldens our enemy, and gives them yet another
tool to recruit more insurgents and terrorists that target our men and women
in harm's way." For its part, Blackwater/Xe
issued a statement responding to the sworn statements of two of its former
employees. The company called the allegations "unsubstantiated and
offensive assertions." It said the lawyers representing alleged Iraqi
victims of Blackwater "have chosen to slander Mr. Prince rather than
raise legal arguments or actual facts that will be considered by a court of
law. We are happy to engage them there." What Blackwater/Xe's
statement did not flatly say is that the allegations are untrue. "I
would have expected a crisp denial," says military law expert Scott
Horton, who has followed this case closely. "The statement had the look
of a denial to it, without actually refuting the specific allegations. I can
understand why from the perspective of a corporate public affairs officer - just
repeating the allegations would be harmful and would add to their
credibility." Blackwater also claims that
the accusations "hold no water" because, even though the two former
employees said that they had already provided similar information to federal
prosecutors, no further Blackwater operatives or officials have been
indicted. The company claims that according to the US attorney, the indictment
of five Blackwater employees for the September 2007 Nisour Square shootings
is "very narrow in its allegation" and does not charge "the
entire Blackwater organization in Baghdad." But, as Blackwater certainly
knows, there are multiple prosecutors looking into its activities on a wide
range of issues, and more than one grand jury can be seated at any given
time. Simply because indictments were not announced regarding other actions
when the Nisour Square charges were brought by the Justice Department does
not mean Prince, Blackwater and its management are in the clear. "We know that the
federal criminal investigation is still ongoing, so this prosecutor's
statement was not really anything definitive," says Horton.
"Second, the presumption in US law is that, with fairly rare exceptions,
crimes are committed by natural persons, not by legal entities like
corporations. A corporation might be fined, for instance, but if it's deeply
entangled in criminal dealings, it's the officers who would be prosecuted. Among
other things, of course, it's impossible to put a corporation in the slammer.
So saying that Blackwater wasn't charged with any crime really doesn't mean
much." Blackwater says it will
formally respond to the allegations against Prince and Blackwater in a legal
motion on August 17 in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia,
where Prince and the company are being sued for war crimes and other alleged
crimes by Susan Burke and the Center for Constitutional Rights. On August 5, Blackwater's lawyers
filed a motion with the court reiterating their request for a gag order to be
placed on the plaintiffs and their lawyers. That motion largely consisted of
quotes from two recent Nation magazine articles covering the case, including
one about the allegations against Prince. Despite the fact that the
affidavits of "John Doe #1" and "John Doe #2" were
public, Blackwater accused the lawyers of "providing this
information" to the media. Blackwater's lawyers charged that the plaintiffs'
attorneys comments to The Nation were intended "to fuel this one-sided
media coverage and to taint the jury pool against [Erik Prince and
Blackwater]," adding that The Nation articles and the "coordinated
media campaign" of the lawyers "demonstrate a clear need for an
Order restraining extrajudicial commentary by the parties and their
counsel." On August 7, Judge T.S. Ellis III, a Reagan appointee, denied
Blackwater's motion. External link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill2 |