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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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January 10th,
2010 - Iraqi in Blackwater Case Rejects Compensation Deal News article from the
Associated Press |
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Iraqi in
Blackwater Case Rejects Compensation Deal By Katharine Houreld Associated Press January 10, 2010 Baghdad - An Iraqi injured
by the U.S. private security firm once known as Blackwater will not accept a
compensation deal for injuries he suffered after company employees opened
fire in a crowded Baghdad square, he said Sunday. Mahdi Abdul-Kadir was
speaking about a civil lawsuit. It is separate from the criminal case brought
against the company, whose dismissal has become a lightening rod for Iraqi
resentment over the behavior of private security companies and prompted Iraqi
politicians to denounce the U.S. justice system. Abdul-Kadir said
Blackwater's offer of compensation to those who had been injured or had
family members killed was too low. He said he has asked the deputy speaker of
Iraq's parliament to cancel the agreement that the plaintiff's lawyer Susan
Burke reached Jan. 6. "We have rejected the
settlement because it is a small amount. We won't accept such an
amount," he said. He added that none of the
plaintiffs had yet received any money from the group, now known as Xe
Services. It is not clear how many, if any, other plaintiffs will follow
Abdul-Kadir's lead and continue to fight the company in court. Another plaintiff had said
the company had offered $30,000 for each person wounded in the 2007 incident
in Nisoor Square and $100,000 to the families of the 17 killed. On Dec. 31, a U.S. federal
judge threw out criminal charges against the company, citing mistakes by
prosecutors. Many Iraqis saw the decision as a confirmation of a long-held
suspicion that U.S. security contractors were above the law. The Iraqi
government vowed to pursue the case and U.S. senator John McCain expressed
his hope that it would be appealed. © 2010 The Associated Press. External link: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_IRAQ_BLACKWATER Most Iraq families ‘accept
Blackwater compensation’ By Ammar Karim Agence France Presse January 10, 2010 Baghdad - All but one of the
families of 17 Iraqis killed in a 2007 shooting by US security guards have
accepted compensation from the Blackwater firm, a lawyer wounded in the
attack said on Sunday. Confirmation of the payouts
comes less than two weeks after a US federal judge dismissed charges against
five guards of the American private security firm accused of killing the
civilians in an unprovoked attack. "All of the families of
the dead agreed, except for one family," said 42-year-old lawyer Hassan
Jabbar Salman, who himself was injured in an arm, the chest and legs in the
attack. He said the family of each
person killed in the Nisur Square shooting in central Baghdad was offered
100,000 dollars, while those wounded received between 20,000 and 50,000
dollars. Salman declined to specify
how much he was to receive in compensation, which has yet to be deposited in
his bank account. Investigators said shortly
after the September 16, 2007, shooting that Salman's car alone was hit with
73 bullets. "I agreed to drop the
civil complaint, but the criminal complaint, US prosecutors are still
handling it, and they have invited me to attend the trial," he told AFP. Salman said a Blackwater
lawyer met in late November with victims' families in Istanbul, where the
settlement was reached. Blackwater - which has since
been renamed Xe - took the families' signatures and fingerprints and later
also recorded video statements of them accepting the terms of the settlement,
he said. Since then, however, nine of
the families have petitioned the office of Khaled al-Attiya, parliament's
deputy speaker, for the deals to be nullified, saying they were forced to
accept the deal under pressure. "We were afraid, we
signed the documents under duress," said 45-year-old Mehdi Abdul
Khaddhar, a day labourer who lost one of his eyes in the shooting. "We
were pressured." The sole family member who
has not accepted a settlement, Haitham al-Rubaie, said he had turned down
Blackwater's repeated offers. "I demand to prosecute
them in a criminal court for the disaster they carried out," said the
medical doctor, who lost his wife and a son in the shooting. "I've had
enough of them underestimating the value of Iraqi blood." Salman said that Rubaie had
demanded 200 million dollars in compensation, while the doctor confirmed he
wanted financial compensation but declined to specify a figure. Copyright © 2010 AFP. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hPnVpRiQs4f29-xgmE1OF6cUH8Og |