Iraqi
Probe Finds Blackwater Mercenaries Fired Without Provocation In Baghdad
Massacre
By Kate Randall
08 October, 2007
WSWS.org
An
official Iraqi investigation into the deadly shooting involving Blackwater
USA found that the security contractors opened fire without provocation
on September 16 in a main square in Baghdad, killing 17 Iraqis and wounding
22.
The probe also found that
the massacre amounted to a deliberate crime and recommended those involved
face trial, a demand that has been rejected by US authorities in all
cases of atrocities committed by both contractors and US military personnel
in Iraq. It will also reportedly recommend compensation to the victims
and their families.
The Iraqi investigative committee,
which was 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. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh
said in a statement, “It was not touched even by a stone.”
The Iraqi probe’s findings
were in line with those of a US military report last week as well as
a New York Times examination of the shooting incident, both of which
took testimony from multiple eyewitnesses. A joint US-Iraqi investigation
into the killings held its first meeting into the shootings on Sunday,
a full three weeks following the deadly incident.
Blackwater officials continue
to maintain that they acted in self-defense and were fired upon and
approached by what they perceived as possible suicide car bombers. According
to the Washington Post, US military officials were denied access to
Blackwater managers for interviews at the company’s compound in
Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Speaking on condition of
anonymity to the Post about the US military’s findings, a US military
official said, “It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong.
The civilians that were fired upon, they didn’t have any weapons
to fire back at them. And none of the IP [Iraqi police] or any of the
local security forces fired back at them.” The official also said
that the Blackwater mercenaries appeared to have fired grenade launchers
as well as machine guns.
A US military unit working
with Iraqi police was in the area of the shooting at the time, and also
helped transport civilian victims to hospitals. US soldiers have viewed
video of the incident and reviewed statements from eyewitnesses, according
to the Post.
The Pentagon is conducting
a review of its relationship with the contractors it employs, one indication
of tensions between the military and the US State Department over the
operations of security firms in Iraq. The military has also stopped
issuing weapons permits to the contractors until it can review who has
them and how they have been used.
The New York Times report,
published October 3, was based on interviews with 12 Iraqi eyewitnesses,
several Iraqi investigators and a US official familiar with an American
investigation into the shootings. It indicates that 17 were killed and
24 wounded in the incident.
According to the Times account,
the car carrying the first people to be killed did not approach the
Blackwater convoy in the square until the driver in the car—subsequently
identified as Ahmed Haithem Ahmed—had been shot in the head and
lost control of the vehicle, possibly moving forward as his dead weight
fell on the accelerator.
Ahmed’s mother, Mahassin
Kadhim, cried out “My son, my son. Help me, help me!” A
traffic policeman tried to get the young driver out of the car, but
the car was moving forward out of control. Following an initial burst
of gunfire, the security guards unleashed a torrent of bullets, even
as Iraqis were turning their vehicles around and attempting to flee.
Mrs. Kadhim was apparently
shot as she held her son in her arms. The car then caught fire after
the Blackwater guards fired some type of grenade into the vehicle. Earlier
accounts had said the mother had been holding a baby, but it now appears
that the charred remains of her son, the driver, were mistaken for those
of an infant. Ahmed’s father later counted 40 bullet holes in
the car.
Based on the description
of an Iraqi lawyer who was wounded in the shooting, the account confirms
preliminary findings of the American investigation that at least one
of the Blackwater guards called out for the shooting to stop, screaming,
“No! No! No!” No witnesses reported any gunfire coming from
Iraqis in and around the square.
Truck driver Fareed Walid
Hassan told the Times, “The shooting started like rain; everyone
escaped his car.” He said he saw a woman dragging her child’s
body. “He was around 10 or 11. He was dead. She was pulling him
by one hand to get him away. She hoped that he was still alive.”
Iraqi investigators also
say that Blackwater helicopters flying overhead fired into cars, leaving
bullet holes in car roofs. Several minutes later in a separate, previously
unreported shooting, a Blackwater convoy—perhaps the same one—moved
north and opened fire on another line of traffic. According to an Iraqi
Interior Ministry official who spoke to the Washington Post, Blackwater
guards fired from all four vehicles in this convoy.
An earlier deadly incident
involving Blackwater is being investigated by the US Justice Department.
Andrew J. Moonen, 27, is the primary suspect in the killing of Raheen
Khalif, one of the bodyguards of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi,
on December 24, 2006. Moonen, a Blackwater firearms technician, reportedly
shot Mahdi three times with his Glock 9-millimeter pistol while in a
drunken stupor.
Within 36 hours, Blackwater
arranged with the State Department to have Moonen flown out of Iraq.
He was reportedly hired two months later by another private contractor,
Combat Support Associates, to work in the region. Moonen, a former army
paratrooper, is presently living in the Seattle area and no charges
have yet been filed in the incident.
According to a report compiled
by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, based largely
on internal Blackwater email messages and State Department documents,
the acting ambassador at the US Embassy in Baghdad suggested at the
time that Blackwater pay the dead man’s family $250,000 in an
effort to stop the Iraqi government from calling for the company to
be banned from the country.
According to the Times, “Blackwater
eventually paid the family $15,000, according to the report, after an
embassy diplomatic security official complained that the ‘crazy
sums’ proposed by the ambassador [identified by the State Dept.
as Margaret Scobey] could encourage Iraqis to try to ‘get killed
by our guys to financially guarantee their family’s future.’”
In the face of continuing
revelations over the September 16 incident and Blackwater’s violent
record, the State Department is pretending to be reining in the private
security operatives, ordering new security procedures for American diplomatic
convoys in Iraq on Friday.
The new State Department
procedures will require that agents from the department’s Bureau
of Diplomatic Security ride with Blackwater security details, that the
bureau review shooting incidents and that convoys communicate with US
military units. Video cameras will be mounted in security vehicles and
radio transmissions from Security convoys will be recorded.
On Thursday, the US House
of Representatives also overwhelmingly approved a bill that would bring
US government contractors in the Iraq war zone under the jurisdiction
of American criminal law and would require the FBI to investigate any
allegations of wrongdoing.
Popular outrage in Iraq against
Blackwater and other US-hired security contractors has mounted in the
wake of the shootings. In an effort aimed at damage control, and reflecting
tensions between the US military and government officials over the mercenary
operations, the US State Department has begun three investigations into
the incident.
The State Department measures
and Congressional legislation can be expected, however, to have little
impact of the operations of Blackwater and other security firms. They
serve the purpose of providing an appearance of “oversight”
while the mercenary operations continue. At present there is no indication
that Blackwater will be withdrawn from Iraq, or that any of the personnel
involved will be punished, either in Iraqi or US courts.
Despite numerous complaints
about the violent and aggressive behavior of Blackwater, the State Department
has continued to utilize the company. Janessa Gans, a US official in
Iraq from 2003 to 2005, complained to high-level embassy officials after
Blackwater guards transporting her in Irbil in northern Iraq fired on
a car driven by an older man carrying a young woman and three children.
(See “I survived Blackwater”)
A heavily armored Blackwater
vehicle in Gan’s speeding convoy smashed into the car as the driver
frantically tried to get out of the way. After she complained to her
driver, “It was an old guy and a family, for goodness’ sake.
Was it necessary for them to destroy their poor old car?” the
driver responded, “Ma’am, we’ve been trained to view
anyone as a potential threat. You don’t know who they might use
as decoys or what the risks are. Terrorists could be disguised as anyone.”
Despite this and other incidents
in which security contractors have indiscriminately terrorized the population,
inflicting casualties and destroying property, to date, no criminal
charges have been filed against them. Blackwater and other security
firms—like the US military itself—are immune from prosecution
under Iraqi law under a decree issued by the US in the early days of
the occupation.
The Military Extraterritorial
Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), enacted in 2000, extended US federal criminal
jurisdiction to felony crimes committed overseas by contractors working
on behalf of the Defense Department. The bill passed Thursday by the
US House extends the authority of MEJA to contractors working for any
agency, including the State Department, which contracts the bulk of
the Blackwater security guards.
It is highly unlikely that
this legislation will result in any prosecutions of military contractors.
According to Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, who has followed
the contractor issue, while as many as 20 potential criminal cases involving
contractors have been referred to the Bush administration’s Justice
Department, none have been pursued. He told the New York Times, “They
have disappeared into a black hole.”
The House bill is not retroactive,
so it would not apply to the contractors involved in the September 16
incident. Democrats agreed as well to insert language requested by the
White House into the bill specifying that it was not intended to impede
intelligence efforts.
There are an estimated 20,000
to 30,000 security contractors in Iraq. In the case of the Blackwater
guards protecting the US diplomats in Baghdad, their activities are
seamlessly integrated into the operations of the US State Department.
A Blackwater contractor,
in fact, wrote the initial “spot report” on the September
16 incident on the letterhead of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security for
the embassy’s Tactical Operations Center. This report claimed
the Blackwater convoy responded properly to an insurgent attack, and
made no mention of civilian casualties.
Despite outraged posturing
on the part of Congressional Democrats and several Democratic presidential
candidates over Blackwater’s activities, it is framed within the
confines of protecting the “US mission” in Iraq and concern
over the damage it might inflict on the “war on terror.”
On October 2, Blackwater
founder and CEO Erik Prince appeared before the House Committee on Oversight
and Government Reform. In his opening remarks to the hearing, committee
Chairman Henry Waxman (Democrat of California), stated that central
to the committee’s examination into Blackwater would be whether
the private mercenary outfit is “helping or hurting our efforts
in Iraq.”
Waxman asked, “The
question for this hearing is whether outsourcing to Blackwater is a
good deal for American taxpayers, the military, and our national interest
in Iraq” and went on to praise Prince for his four years of service
in the elite Navy SEALS. The committee agreed to a State Department
request not to specifically question Prince on the September 16 shooting
incident at the hearing.
Just the day before the House
committee hearing, a new US government contract with Blackwater took
effect. Presidential Airways Inc., which is owned by Blackwater’s
corporate parent, Prince Group LLC, has been awarded a four-year contact
to supply specialized airplanes, crews and equipment for flight operations
in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Blackwater USA has government
contracts totaling at least $800 million, providing security to US Ambassador
Ryan Crocker and other diplomats in Iraq. The company’s private
security guards earn as much as $1,200 a day. It is estimated that 40
percent of the money authorized by Congress to fund the war goes to
private military contractors, who constitute a critical component of
the neo-colonial occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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