Blackwater guards shot without provocation: Iraqi report

If the US were to hand over Blackwater staff for prosecution this would be a first and is quite unlikely. They can now claim that the contractors can face justice in the US having passed a new law there. Of course this does nothing to further Iraqi sovereignty but that does not count. The US often ignores Iraqi sovereignty except in rhetoric defending its occupation.
The death toll has been raised from 11 to 17 but that will hardly make any difference. Western media I have listened to lately still use the lower number.


Blackwater guards shot Iraqis without provocation, report says


Peter Walker and agencies
Monday October 8, 2007
Guardian Unlimited




Guards from the US security firm Blackwater had not been shot at before they opened fire last month on Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, killing 17 people, according to an official Iraqi investigation into the deaths.
The inquiry, ordered by the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, described the incident as a deliberate crime and called for those responsible for the deaths to be prosecuted.

Previously, the death toll from the controversial incident on September 16 had been put at 11.

The shooting prompted a wave of outrage in Iraq about the activities of private US security firms protecting diplomats and workers, and calls for those responsible for the deaths to be tried.

The new investigation said 17 people were killed and 23 wounded when Blackwater staff opened fire in a square in Baghdad.

Blackwater - which has not responded to the latest accusations has said its guards reacted lawfully to an attack on one of its convoys.

An Iraqi government spokesman said yesterday that the investigation had found "no evidence that the Blackwater convoy came under fire directly or indirectly".

"It was not hit even by a stone," he said.

Iraq's cabinet would combine the findings with those of a joint US-Iraqi commission reviewing such security operations, which met for the first time yesterday, "and subsequently adopt the legal procedures to hold this company accountable", he added.

A US embassy spokeswoman in Baghdad refused to say whether Washington would consider handing over any Blackwater staff for prosecution.

"This and other matters will be discussed by the joint commission as they proceed with their work, [so it is] best not to prejudge the outcome of their discussions at this point," Mirembe Nantongo told the AFP news agency.

The US has launched a series of reviews into both the shooting incident and the wider issue of private security contractors. FBI investigators arrived in Baghdad to look into the deaths, while Patrick Kennedy, the envoy of the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is looking into security for American officials in Iraq.

On Friday, the US said it would keep a closer watch on private security firms after a review ordered by Ms Rice. That review recommended that American security agents accompany private security guards when they escort US diplomatic convoys.

A US congressional report released last week said Blackwater had been involved in at least 195 shooting incidents in Iraq since 2005. In 84% of those cases, it said, Blackwater personnel were the first to open fire.

Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, was called last week to testify about the September 16 incident before a congressional committee. He insisted the patrol had only opened fire when it came under attack.

Iraq: Put Blackwater Guards on Trial

The FBI is doing its own investigation. The question now is whether the US will really let Blackwater Guards stand trial in Iraq. When and if the Iraqi government tries to arrest them they may find that the guards are no longer in Iraq as was the case with a Blackwater employee who killed an Iraqi bodyguard while drunk.

Iraqis: Put Blackwater Guards on Trial

Thursday October 4, 2007 4:16 PM


By STEVEN R. HURST and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA

Associated Press Writers

BAGHDAD (AP) - The official Iraqi investigation into last month's Blackwater shooting has been submitted to the government and recommends the security guards face trial in Iraqi courts, and that the company pay compensation to the victims, an Iraqi government minister told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The three-member panel, led by Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi, finished its work earlier this week and submitted the report and recommendations to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday, the government minister told AP on condition he not be identified by name.

The minister said the report was issued under the signatures of al-Obeidi, Maj. Gen. Tariq al-Baldawi, the deputy minister of national security; and Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, the deputy interior minister for intelligence and security affairs.

The cabinet minister said the report determined that 13 Iraqi civilians - not 11 as originally reported - were killed when Blackwater USA guards sprayed western Baghdad's Nisoor Square with gunfire Sept. 16. The investigation maintained, as Iraqi authorities have throughout, that the Blackwater guards had not been fired on when they unleashed the fusillade. It said no shots were fired at Blackwater personnel throughout.

Blackwater has said its guards, which protect State Department personnel in Baghdad, only used their weapons after they came under fire.

The Iraqi report said the Blackwater guards had violated accepted rules of engagement, should face trial in the Iraqi justice system, and that the company should compensate the families of the victims.

Blackwater must go: al Maliki

This is interesting. Does Maliki thinks he has the power to oust Blackwater. He has already lost out earlier when he caved in and decided that they could operate until a joint investigation finished. Maliki has demanded that an Iranian seized in Kurdistan and others too seized long ago be released. Nothing has happened. The US simply ignores him.
Of course the Iraqi people no doubt feel the insult to their sovereignty. But the US seems not to worry about such results.

Iraq PM says 'unfit' Blackwater must go
22 hours ago

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Wednesday that Blackwater should leave the country because of the mountain of evidence against the under-fire US security firm.

His comments came amid growing anger among Iraqis that "above-the-law" security contractors are continuing to operate in Iraq while Blackwater is being probed over a deadly shooting 17 days ago.

"I believe the abundance of evidence against it makes it unfit to stay in Iraq," Maliki told a televised press conference in Baghdad.

A New York Times report on Wednesday citing witnesses, Iraqi investigators and a US official said that as many as 17 people were killed and 24 wounded when Blackwater employees opened fire in central Baghdad on September 16.

Blackwater maintains its men were legitimately responding to an ambush while protecting a US State Department convoy but they are accused of firing into crowded Nisoor Square indiscriminately.

Immediately after the incident, in which at least 10 people were confirmed killed, Maliki said Washington should replace Blackwater forthwith.

He later backed down and agreed to await the outcome of investigations.

A member of the Shiite ruling coalition, Amira al-Baldawi, told AFP: "Some foreign companies believe they are above the Iraqi law."

Baghdad lawyer Hassan Shaaban said the firm should have been shut down at least until investigators had finished their work.

"This company should halt its work until investigations are over," he said. "There should have been an investigation into the Nisoor Square event before a decision was taken to say if they should continue working in Iraq or not."

Three investigations have been called by the US State Department, whose staff Blackwater was protecting during the shootings, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called for a "360-degree" look at the events.

The US Defence Department, which also employs hired guns from Blackwater to protect a number of its personnel, has launched a fourth inquiry.

"As far as the law is concerned, if the probes prove they are responsible for the incident they should be expelled in accordance with Iraqi law," said Hassan.

"They are not an army neither US armed forces. They merely present company services and consequently any violation on the land of Iraq should be subject to the Iraqi judiciary."

Blackwater boss, ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince, denied at a hearing before Congress on Tuesday that his staff ran riot like "cowboys" after a Congressional report suggested the company's security teams in Iraq are out of control.

A committee report found that Blackwater, which protects US diplomats and visiting dignitaries, had been involved in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, and accused it of covering up fatal shootings involving its staff.

In one incident cited by the committee, a drunken Blackwater employee shot and killed a guard of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi.

We'll revoke Al-Maliki's Licence First

One wonders if an American actually said this. Given US insensitivity it is possible. I was not aware of some of the other incidents with Blackwater that are listed here. They do not get much play in the western media. We will see what if anything happens as the result of the joint investigation. The Iraqi govt. is already drawing up a law that will hold contractors responsible. I wonder what the US response will be. It is unlikely that they will fire Blackwater for sure.

This is from the following site.

'We'll revoke Al-Maliki's licence first'
The privatisation of security in Iraq threatens more than innocent civilians, reports Nermeen Al-Mufti

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The killing of 11 civilians in Baghdad two weeks ago has once again put Blackwater on the spot. The US security firm first came into the public eye in early April 2004, when four of its personnel were killed and mutilated by mobs in Falluja. Although Iraqi religious parties denounced the attacks at the time, Bush gave the town four days to deliver the perpetrators before ordering an all-out attack, one in which thousands of Falluja inhabitants perished.

The Iraqi government would like to see Blackwater brought to account. But that is not going to be easy. The spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, Abdul-Karim Khalif, says that the ministry provided Iraqi courts with evidence against Blackwater concerning other shootings over the past seven months. In one shooting last February, three of the guards of Al-Iraqiya television were killed. On 9 September, five Iraqis were killed when Blackwater personnel fired at them near the municipality building in Baghdad. Three days later, five other citizens were wounded in another shooting on Palestine Street. Blackwater, the Iraqi Interior Ministry maintains, is also involved in the killing of an Iraqi journalist near the Iraqi Foreign Ministry building in Baghdad in February, as well as the killing of a citizen near the Iraqi Interior Ministry building in Baghdad in May.

"Most of the laws passed by Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator of Iraq under US occupation, remain in force. Some of these laws violate Iraqi sovereignty, including a law that prevents Iraqis from prosecuting any American or any individual who cooperates with America or the coalition authorities, whether civilian or military," Abu Abdullah, an Iraqi lawyer, told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Following the recent incident in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki threatened to revoke Blackwater's licence. What he later discovered was that the company was working in Iraq without a licence. The Americans weren't impressed by Al-Maliki's uncharacteristic boldness. "We'll revoke Al-Maliki's licence before he revokes Blackwater's licence," a US official quipped.

Within four days of the incident, Blackwater was back in operation. A spokesman for Operation Imposing Law said that the services of private contractors in Iraq cannot be discontinued without creating a security vacuum. According to media reports, the Iraqis and Americans have formed an eight-member committee to investigate the Blackwater incident. The committee is co-chaired by a top US diplomat and the Iraqi defence minister.

Blackwater has over 20,000 personnel in Iraq, all well- armed and backed with armoured vehicles and aircraft. The company has military equipment comparable to that used by the US army and its pilots fly reconnaissance missions over Baghdad on a daily basis. Last April, one of its helicopters was shot down during clashes in Al-Fadl district of Baghdad.

According to press reports, about 34 per cent of the budget the US government initially allocated for the reconstruction of Iraq has been diverted to private security firms. The "privatisation" of the war in Iraq is well underway, The Los Angeles Times reported. In his book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, American investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill links the modern security firm to the Knights of Malta, an offshoot of the Knights Templar. Blackwater's employees, he argues, share the same religious zeal of ancient crusaders.

"Private security companies -- whether American, British, or South African -- do not differ much from Iraq's sectarian militias. These companies act as if they were entitled to commit any crime on the pretext of self-defence," Abu Abdullah said. US federal authorities are currently investigating the involvement of Blackwater employees in smuggling weapons into Iraq.

Meanwhile, US airborne troops shot dead seven Iraqi civilians in the predominantly Sunni town of Al-Mahmoudiya, 20km south of Baghdad. Little else is known about the operation. But US authorities regularly claim that such attacks are part of their offensive against Al-Qaeda. Similar operations take place in Sadr City frequently, the target in that case being the Mahdi Army

Blackwater back on the job.

As reported in the article:
A top aide to Maliki conceded it may prove difficult for the Iraqi government to expel Western security contractors.
Indeed, it is difficult because Iraq is not sovereign at least in areas such as this. The US will decide if and when Blackwater is relieved of its duties. Probably at most some blood money will be paid for the deaths.


Blackwater USA Back On Limited Iraq Duty

BAGHDAD, Sept. 21, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS/AP) The U.S. Embassy resumed limited convoy movements with Blackwater USA protection in Baghdad, four days after all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials was suspended in response to Iraqi outrage over the alleged killing of civilians by the American security firm.

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said the decision was made after consultations with the Iraqi governments and the convoys will be allowed to leave the heavily fortified Green Zone on a select basis.

"All movements supported by the PSDs have to be mission-essential," she said, referring to an acronym for personal security details run by Blackwater and other security contractors protecting Westerners and other dignitaries in Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday she had ordered a "full and complete review" of security practices for U.S. diplomats.

Rice said she had directed the State Department to examine "how we are providing security to our diplomats."

Rice had no comment about Friday's resumption of Blackwater-protected convoys but paid tribute to the guards from the firm, one of three that provide security for U.S. diplomats and other civilian government officials in Iraq.

"We have needed and received the protection of Blackwater for a number of years now, and they have lost their own people in protecting our people in extremely dangerous circumstances," she said.

"We take very seriously what happened," Rice said, noting she had called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday to express regret.

A top aide to Maliki conceded it may prove difficult for the Iraqi government to expel Western security contractors.

The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation into Sunday's incident was ongoing, said a way out of the Blackwater crisis could be the payment of compensation to victims' families and an agreement from all sides on a new set of rules for their operations in Iraq.

An Interior Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said Friday that a report had concluded that Blackwater guards opened fire from four positions on a square in western Baghdad after a vehicle near their convoy failed to stop.

Iraqi witnesses and officials have offered several conflicting versions of events and it was not clear how the Interior Ministry report would affect a joint U.S.-Iraqi investigation.

Checkbook imperialism: The Blackwater Fiasco

It seems that there is a surge in contractors that has brought them to a level in Iraq that is larger than US troops. It will be interesting to see how all of this pans out. The US is not about to do away with its guards and in order to provide profits for Bush cronies and others there is no longer the manpower within the armed forces to provide these services.
Imagine the gall of Blackwater:
We have become the most responsive, cost-effective means of affecting the strategic balance in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere.”
Translated that means that the company profits from US imperialism everywhere.

Checkbook Imperialism: The Blackwater Fiasco



Posted on Sep 18, 2007

iraqfact.com

By Robert Scheer

Please, please, I tell myself, leave Orwell out of it. Find some other, fresher way to explain why “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is dependent upon killer mercenaries. Or why the “democratically elected government” of “liberated” Iraq does not explicitly have the legal power to expel Blackwater USA from its land or hold any of the 50,000 private contractor troops that the U.S. government has brought to Iraq accountable for their deadly actions.

Were there even the faintest trace of Iraqi independence rising from the ashes of this failed American imperialist venture, Blackwater would have to fold its tents and go, if only in the interest of keeping up appearances. After all, the Iraqi Interior Ministry claimed that the Blackwater thugs guarding a U.S. State Department convoy through the streets of Baghdad fired “randomly at citizens” in a crowded square on Sunday, killing 11 people and wounding 13 others. So the Iraqi government has ordered Blackwater to leave the country after what a government spokesman called a “flagrant assault ... on Iraqi citizens.”

But who told those Iraqi officials that they have the power to control anything regarding the 182,000 privately contracted personnel working for the U.S. in Iraq? Don’t they know about Order 17, which former American proconsul Paul Bremer put in place to grant contractors, including his own Blackwater bodyguards, immunity from Iraqi prosecution? Nothing has changed since the supposed transfer of power from the Coalition Provisional Authority, which Bremer once headed, to the Iraqi government holed up in the Green Zone and guarded by Blackwater and other “private” soldiers.

They are “private” in the same fictional sense that our uniformed military is a “volunteer” force, since both are lured by the dollars offered by the same paymaster, the U.S. government. Contractors earn substantially more, despite $20,000 to $150,000 signing bonuses and an all-time-high average annual cost of $100,000 per person for the uniformed military. All of this was designed by the neocon hawks in the Pentagon to pursue their dreams of empire while avoiding a conscripted army, which would have millions howling in the street by now in protest.

Instead, we have checkbook imperialism. The U.S. government purchases whatever army it needs, which has led to the dependence upon private contract firms like Blackwater USA, with its $300-million-plus contract to protect U.S. State Department personnel in Iraq. That is why the latest Blackwater incident, which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki branded a “crime,” is so difficult to deal with. Iraqis are clearly demanding to rid their country of Blackwater and other contractors, and on Tuesday the Iraqi government said it would be scrutinizing the status of all private security firms working in the country.

But the White House hopes the outrage will once again blow over. As the Associated Press reported on Monday: “The U.S. clearly hoped the Iraqis would be satisfied with an investigation, a finding of responsibility and compensation to the victim’s families—and not insist on expelling a company that the Americans cannot operate here without.” Or, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified to the U.S. Senate last week: “There is simply no way at all that the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts.”

Consider the irony of that last statement—that the U.S. experiment in building democracy in Iraq is dependent upon the same garrisons of foreign mercenaries that drove the founders of our own country to launch the American Revolution. As George Washington warned in his farewell address, once the American government enters into these “foreign entanglements,” we lose the Republic, because public accountability is sacrificed to the necessities of war for empire.

Despite the fact that Blackwater USA gets almost all of its revenue from the U.S. government—much of it in no-bid contracts aided, no doubt, by the lavish contributions to the Republican Party made by company founder Erik Prince and his billionaire parents—its operations remain largely beyond public scrutiny. Blackwater and others in this international security racket operate as independent states of their own, subject neither to the rules of Iraq nor the ones that the U.S. government applies to its own uniformed forces. “We are not simply a ‘private security company,’ ” Blackwater boasts on its corporate website. “We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm. ... We have become the most responsive, cost-effective means of affecting the strategic balance in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere.”

Yeah, so who elected you guys to run the world?

Blackwater Guards Fired First: Iraqi Report

This is from the NY Times op eds. These are now available to everyone. Hurrah! Without Blackwater US diplomatic missions will be grounded since Blackwater protects them. Most commentators have no criticism of the fact that private contractors are beyond the reach of Iraqi law in cases such as these.

Iraqi Report Says Blackwater Guards Fired First


By SABRINA TAVERNISE and JAMES GLANZ
Published: September 19, 2007
BAGHDAD, Sept. 18 — A preliminary Iraqi report on a shooting involving an American diplomatic motorcade said Tuesday that Blackwater security guards were not ambushed, as the company reported, but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman’s call to stop, killing a couple and their infant.


The Reach of War
» The report, by the Ministry of Interior, was presented to the Iraqi cabinet and, though unverified, seemed to contradict an account offered by Blackwater USA that the guards were responding to gunfire by militants. The report said Blackwater helicopters had also fired. The Ministry of Defense said 20 Iraqis had been killed, a far higher number than had been reported before.

In a sign of the seriousness of the standoff, the American Embassy here suspended diplomatic missions outside the Green Zone and throughout Iraq on Tuesday.

“There was not shooting against the convoy,” said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government’s spokesman. “There was no fire from anyone in the square.”

A State Department spokesman, Edgar Vasquez, said he had not heard of the report and repeated that the department was conducting an investigation supported by the American military. A spokeswoman for Blackwater did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

“Let these folks do the investigation and get all the facts,” Mr. Vasquez said, “and if department procedures were not followed, after the facts have been gathered we would decide what action to take.”

The shooting, which took place on Sunday, has angered Iraqi officials and touched off a harsh debate about private security companies, which operate outside Iraqi law, a privilege extended to them by Americans officials while Iraq’s government was still under American administration. Blackwater, which guards all top American officials here, had its work suspended, and Iraqi officials agreed to rewrite the rules to make the companies accountable.

“We do understand that the security companies are subject to high levels of threat and they do a good job at protection, but this does not entitle them to immunity from Iraqi laws,” Mr. Dabbagh said. “This is what the Iraqi government would like to review.”

He said the Iraqi and American governments had set up a joint committee to investigate the deaths.

American Embassy officials had said Monday that the Blackwater guards had been responding to a car bomb, but Mr. Dabbagh said the bomb was so far away that it could not possibly have been a reason for the convoy to begin shooting.

Instead, he said, the convoy had initiated the shooting when a car did not heed a police officer and moved into an intersection.

“The traffic policeman was trying to open the road for them,” he said. “It was a crowded square. But one small car did not stop. It was moving very slowly. They shot against the couple and their child. They started shooting randomly.”

In video shot shortly after the episode, the child appeared to have burned to the mother’s body after the car caught fire, according to an official who saw it.

In interviews on Tuesday, six Iraqis who had been in the area at the time of the shooting, including a man who was wounded and an Iraqi Army soldier who helped rescue people, offered roughly similar versions.

The Iraqi soldier, who said he was standing at a checkpoint on the edge of the square, said he thought the convoy believed the small car was a suicide bomber and opened fire. According to the wounded man, recuperating in Yarmouk Hospital, the car with the family was driving on the wrong side of the road.