Private
Security Contractors In Baghdad Kill Two Iraqi Women
By Kate Randall
10 October, 2007
WSWS.org
Two
Iraqi women were killed Tuesday afternoon when their vehicle was fired
on by a private security convoy in central Baghdad. The guards were
from the Unity Resources Group, an Australian-owned company.
Iraqi Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf
told CNN that the mercenaries fired 19 bullets, killing two passengers
in the front of a white sedan. Numerous witnesses recounted a violent
scene in which the driver panicked, shots rang out and the convoy sped
away.
The shootings came amid mounting
anger over the operations of private security contractors in Iraq. A
September 16 massacre in Baghdad by Blackwater Security USA killed 17
Iraqi civilians and wounded at least 22 others. An Iraqi government
probe determined that the killings by the Blackwater mercenaries were
unprovoked and that they had “committed a deliberate crime and
should be punished by law.”
A spokesman for the US Embassy
in Baghdad, which exclusively contracts Blackwater for its security
details, claimed there was “no embassy connection” to the
latest incident.
Interior Ministry officials
said Tuesday’s shootings occurred around 2:30 p.m. near the former
German embassy building in the Karrada district, a business and residential
area generally regarded as secure. The security convoy consisted of
four white SUVs, and the women were in an Oldsmobile.
Shopkeeper Basim Mohammed
told Reuters that four or five cars were driving down the street, when
“an Oldsmobile came out of this side road and it had two women
in the front and children in the back.”
“They fired a warning
shot when they were about 80 meters away, which probably made them panic
because they went forward a little bit, and [the security guards] started
firing at her from all directions,” he told Reuters television.
Footage from the scene showed
blood stains down the side of the car. After the vehicle had been towed
away, shattered glass and pools of blood remained on the pavement.
Another shopkeeper, Ammar
Fallah, told Agence France Presse that guards in the convoy signaled
for the woman driving the car to pull over. “When she failed to
do so they opened fire, killing her and the woman next to her,”
he said. “There were two children in the back seat but they were
not harmed. The women were both shot in the head.”
Another witness, Sattar Jabar,
told AFP that the women’s car apparently moved too close to the
convoy. “It tried to avoid the convoy of four white SUVs of the
foreigners but it came close to the last vehicle, which then opened
fire immediately,” killing the two women.
Jabar said that a third woman
seated in the back was hit in the shoulder and that one of the children
had been struck by flying glass.
Another witness told CNN,
“Maybe she [the driver] got confused or she got scared and when
she got scared, they frantically started shooting at them.” He
added that he opposed the foreign contractors operating in Iraq. “I
care for my brother and friend and these...foreigners don’t care
or serve us in any way,” he said.
Another witness to the shooting
said the women were shot from a distance, telling CNN, “It was
a family, two women, one was driving and the second one was a passenger.
They killed them and they were at a far distance from them.”
A policeman who heard gunfire
and came running to the scene told Aljazeera.net that after the shooting,
the security contractors “rode away like gangsters.”
In connection with the September
16 shootings, the Iraqi government wants Blackwater to pay $136 million
in compensation, $8 million to each of the families of the 17 victims.
According to a senior Iraqi government source, Blackwater has been informed
of the demand.
According to the Associated
Press, the Iraqi officials are also demanding that the US government
cut its ties with Blackwater within six months.
An official Iraqi probe into
the massacre, commissioned by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the
Blackwater guards at no time came under direct or indirect fire before
shooting up the intersection in Nisour Square more than three weeks
ago. This account has been corroborated by numerous eyewitnesses and
a US military examination of the events.
The Iraqi government is also
demanding that Blackwater turn over the guards involved for prosecution
in Iraqi courts. Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf stated
on Monday, “Employees of the company violated the rules governing
use of force by security companies. They have committed a deliberate
crime and should be punished under the law.”
The US has consistently rejected
such demands, as the US military and foreign contractors are presently
immune from prosecution in Iraqi courts under a decree issued by the
US provisional government in the early days of the occupation.
An Iraqi government source
told Reuters that the $8 million demanded per victim in the September
16 atrocity roughly corresponded to compensation paid by the Libyan
government to the families of the 270 people killed in the 1988 Lockerbie
airline bombing over Scotland.
Commenting on the Iraqi government’s
demand, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters, “Obviously,
the issue of what some refer to as bereavement payments—or a number
of different names for them—is an issue of some sensitivity that
we are taking a look at.”
“It is an issue that
commonly turns up when you have security incidents in which there is
a loss of life,” he said. “As with other previous incidents
throughout Iraq, civilian or military, we are taking a look at the issue.”
McCormack cautioned against
“jumping to conclusions” about Blackwater’s conduct
in the fatal shootings, pointing to ongoing investigations into the
incident being conducted by the State Department and the Pentagon. He
also made the claim that Al Qaeda was far more often responsible for
civilian deaths than security contractors working for the US.
Blackwater and other security
contractors form an integral part of the US occupation and have earned
the hatred of the Iraqi population for their violent actions. These
firms operate by US military rules, under which US troops and foreign
contractors are authorized to fire at vehicles that get too close to
convoys or checkpoints, after giving a series of warnings known as “escalation
of force.”
A lawsuit by the American
Civil Liberties Union is seeking copies of military reports on such
shootings. Of 500 claims for compensation filed by Iraqi families in
connection with the ACLU, 133 were allegedly killed for driving too
close to a convoy, while 59 were gunned down at checkpoints.
According to the Boston Globe,
“Those cases include allegations that US soldiers, on several
occasions, shot at random from convoys, killing bystanders; a case in
which soldiers allegedly fired 200 rounds into a car that did not stop
soon enough at a checkpoint; killing two parents and injuring their
two young children; and an allegation that US soldiers had fired on
a car carrying a pregnant woman who was on her way to the hospital to
give birth, killing her.”
Blackwater USA has acknowledged
involvement in 195 shootings since 2005. Eighty percent of these were
“escalation of force incidents” in which they fired without
provocation. The US military has refused to release statistics of shootings
of civilians at checkpoints or near convoys.
According to figures obtained
by the McClatchy news service, in the last year 429 Iraqi civilians
have been killed or wounded in checkpoint and convoy shootings by US
soldiers and military contractors.
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