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Iraq: Blackwater Guards Fired Unprovoked    [

    Security Firm Faces Criminal Charges in Iraq
    By James Glanz and Sabrina Tavernise
    The New York Times

    Sunday 23 September 2007

    Baghdad - The Iraqi government said Saturday that it expects to refer criminal charges to its courts within days in connection with a shooting here by a private American security company, and the Interior Ministry gave new details of six other episodes it is investigating involving the company.

    The state minister for national security affairs, Shirwan al-Waili, said the government had received little information from the American side in the early days of a joint investigation of the shooting, which involved the company Blackwater USA and left at least eight Iraqis dead. But he said that the Iraqi investigation was largely completed and that he believed the findings were definitive. "The shots fired on the Iraqis were unjustifiable," he said. "It was harsh and horrible."

    Although Mr. Waili did not spell out what the investigative committee would recommend to the criminal court, a preliminary report of findings by the Interior Ministry, the National Security Ministry and the Defense Ministry stated that "the murder of citizens in cold blood in the Nisour area by Blackwater is considered a terrorist action against civilians just like any other terrorist operation."

    "The criminals will be referred to the Iraqi court system," it said.

    The spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, also laid out previous episodes involving Blackwater this year in which he said a total of 10 Iraqis had been killed and 15 wounded. The company would not comment on those incidents on Saturday.

    The details came as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was at the United Nations to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials to discuss Iraqi security and other issues. The Iraqi government has already demanded that Blackwater, which handles security for diplomatic personnel, be banned from working in Iraq, and the broadening investigation is sure to pull the Iraqis and their American supporters even further apart.

    Blackwater may also face investigation on another front: The News and Observer newspaper in Raleigh, N.C., reported that United States federal investigators were looking into whether the company shipped unlicensed automatic weapons and military goods to Iraq. The Department of Justice would not confirm whether an investigation was under way; Blackwater, in a statement issued Saturday, said it had not done anything wrong.

    The main shooting under investigation began near midday last Sunday when Blackwater guards fired at Iraqi civilians for reasons that neither the company nor the United States government, which is also investigating, have fully explained.

    Some witnesses have said that Iraqi Army soldiers nearby also began firing at some point, greatly complicating efforts to understand what happened and raising the question, at least among American officials, of whether the Blackwater guards believed they were under attack and acted properly.

    Blackwater, in its only statement on the shooting, has said its employees were responding to an ambush.

    Iraqi officials indicated that they were weighing the earlier shootings involving Blackwater in their consideration of what the practical consequences of the Nisour Square shooting should be. "The American Blackwater company has made for the seventh time the same mistake against the Iraqis and in different places in Baghdad," according to a preliminary report from the Iraqi investigation obtained by The New York Times.

    According to General Khalaf, the other events under investigation are a Feb. 4 shooting that killed an Iraqi journalist near the Foreign Ministry; a Feb. 7 shooting in which three guards at the Iraqi state television station were killed; a Feb. 14 episode in which Blackwater employees are accused of smashing windshields; a shooting in May that killed one person near the Interior Ministry; a Sept. 9 shooting that killed five people near a Baghdad city government building; and a Sept. 12 shooting that wounded five people in eastern Baghdad.

    No results of the American inquiry have been made public. For that reason, American officials have privately cautioned against drawing early conclusions.

    In addition, a United States Embassy official said Saturday that investigators did not want to present incorrect results that would have to be revised, and so would let the investigation take its course before commenting. And the official said that cooperation between the two sides in the investigation was beginning and that information would begin flowing more freely.

    But the official also said that embassy activities had been slowed because convoys protected by Blackwater guards had been temporarily stopped as a result of the shooting.

    "Our own movements, as you know, were severely restricted and remain restricted," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "So ever since the incident took place, we have not been moving around Baghdad as we did before."

    Although the official declined to comment directly on how those restrictions may have had an impact on the American investigation, United States military personnel, who can move with their own security details, have been seen interviewing Iraqis at the scene of the shooting in recent days. If American civilian officials who are leading the investigation from the embassy are unable to move through the city, that restriction could clearly slow the work of gathering information from the scene and from witnesses.

    The embassy official said he had not heard that the Iraqi government was preparing to forward the Blackwater case to the Iraqi justice system. "In all honesty I'm not aware of that," the official said. "I don't think they've communicated that to us government-to-government."

    Even if murder charges were referred to Iraqi courts, it is unclear what real legal peril would be faced by Blackwater or any of its employees. A provision originally called Order 17, signed by L. Paul Bremer III in 2004, while he was the top American administrator in Iraq, was later enshrined into Iraqi law, effectively giving security companies working for the United States government immunity from prosecution here.

    Perhaps for that reason, no Western contractors of any kind are known to have been convicted of any crimes in Iraq.

    In the possible weapons smuggling case, evidence of a federal investigation came to light earlier this week, when the Democratic chairman of a House committee mentioned it in a letter complaining about the actions of the State Department's inspector general.

    In a Sept. 18 letter to Howard J. Krongard, the inspector general, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said a federal prosecutor had asked State Department investigators for help in looking into whether "a large private security contractor working for the State Department was illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq."

    In its statement Saturday from its headquarters in Moyock, N.C., Blackwater said it had uncovered thefts by two employees who were then fired. The company said that it notified the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and that the two former employees have been convicted in court.

    The statement added that the "issue is completely unrelated to Blackwater U.S. government programs in Iraq." It said "the company has no knowledge of any employee improperly exporting weapons."

    In Iraq on Saturday, President Jalal Talabani expressed anger at the arrest of a man he said was an Iranian diplomat, Agai Mahummdi Firhadi, who was detained by the American military on Thursday in northern Iraq. A statement from the president's office said he had "sent a message of anger," to the American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, and the American military commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, because the Iranian had been on a diplomatic delegation.

    The American military said in a statement at the time that he had been involved in transporting bombs into Iraq, and in training militants.

    Mr. Talabani told the Americans that the Iranian government had threatened to close its borders with the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq if the official was not released.

    As the Blackwater case moved forward, violence continued elsewhere in Iraq. A Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic State in Iraq, released a video to Islamic Web sites Saturday showing the execution of five men said to be captured Iraqi Army soldiers.

    In the video, apparently intended to terrify Iraqi Army soldiers, men wearing army uniforms and blindfolds, their hands tied behind their backs, knelt in a dusty clearing between eucalyptus trees while a hooded man shot them from behind with a pistol. Also visible in the video is another hooded man apparently also videotaping the executions, though from a different angle.

    Also on Saturday, the Iraqi authorities arrested 11 suspects in the car bomb assassination of Abdul-Sattar Abu Reesha, the leader of the American-supported Sunni tribal uprising against extremist Islamic insurgents. Hurra television quoted Mr. Abu Reesha's brother, Ahmed Abu Reesha, as saying that the suspects were members of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which took credit for the slaying.

    In Baghdad, Mr. Waili, the security minister, indicated that despite announcements that Iraqi and American investigators would be working together, Iraqi investigators had received little or no information from their American counterparts and had gotten no access to the Blackwater guards at the center of the events.

    Mr. Waili said that there were effectively three separate investigations: an Iraqi one, an American one, and a joint effort that had gotten nowhere.

    But the embassy official said cooperation between the two sides was taking place.

    "From our point of view there are not three investigations," he said. "There is only the joint investigation that we have with the Iraqis."

    He said that the United States had received cooperation from Iraqi officials and that the first joint meetings were just starting.

    The push against foreign security companies, some Western officials have suggested, may be motivated by more than the quest for justice. There could also be a financial motivation, particularly if, as some Iraqi officials say, the episode could result in new rules that would cut down on the number of foreign companies operating here.

    Fewer foreign companies would mean more space for Iraqi companies, and Iraqi officials in charge of licenses for the private security industry have become slower at issuing them to foreigners for more than a year, according to one security industry official formerly in Baghdad.

    In 2006, rules for registration changed dramatically, the official said, with two new steps, including consulting with Mr. Waili's ministry, added to the already complicated process.

    What is obvious, though, is the emotional push for change created by the Nisour shooting.

    "It was really painful," Mr. Waili said. "We are losing Iraqis every day, but this was a really painful incident. They were innocent people."

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    Karim Hilmi and Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Baghdad, and James Risen from Washington.

 

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    Go to Original

    Iraq: Blackwater Guards Fired Unprovoked
    By Robert H. Reid
    The Associated Press

    Saturday 22 September 2007

    Baghdad - Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in a shooting last week that left 11 people dead, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday. He said the case was referred to the Iraqi judiciary.

    Iraq's president, meanwhile, demanded that the Americans release an Iranian arrested this week on suspicion of smuggling weapons to Shiite militias. The demand adds new strains to U.S.-Iraqi relations only days before a meeting between President Bush and Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

    Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said Iraqi authorities had completed an investigation into the Sept. 16 shooting in Nisoor Square in western Baghdad and concluded that Blackwater guards were responsible for the deaths.

    He told The Associated Press that the conclusion was based on witness statements as well as videotape shot by cameras at the nearby headquarters of the national police command. He said eight people were killed at the scene and three of the 15 wounded died in hospitals.

    Blackwater, which provides most of the security for U.S. diplomats and civilian officials in Iraq, has insisted that its guards came under fire from armed insurgents and shot back only to defend themselves.

    Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said Saturday that she knew nothing about the videotape and was contractually prohibited from discussing details of the shooting.

    Khalaf also said the ministry was looking into six other fatal shootings involving the Moyock, N.C.-based company in which 10 Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded. Among the shootings was one Feb. 7 outside Iraqi state television in Baghdad that killed three building guards.

    "These six cases will support the case against Blackwater, because they show that it has a criminal record," Khalaf said.

    Khalaf said the report was "sent to the judiciary" although he would not specify whether that amounted to filing of criminal charges. Under Iraqi law, an investigating judge reviews criminal complaints and decides whether there is enough evidence for a trial.

    Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh denied that authorities had decided to file charges against the Blackwater guards and said Saturday that no decision had been taken whether to seek punishment.

    "The necessary measures will be taken that will preserve the honor of the Iraqi people," he said in New York, where al-Maliki arrived Friday for the U.N. General Assembly session. "We have ongoing high-level meetings with the U.S. side about this issue."

    Al-Maliki is expected to raise the issue with Bush during a meeting Monday in New York.

    It is doubtful that foreign security contractors could be prosecuted under Iraqi law. A directive issued by U.S. occupation authorities in 2004 granted contractors, U.S. troops and many other foreign officials immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law.

    Security contractors are also not subject to U.S. military law under which U.S. troopers face prosecution for killing or abusing Iraqis.

    Iraqi officials have said in the wake of the Nisoor Square shooting that they will press for amendments to the 2004 directive.

    A senior aide to al-Maliki said Friday that three of the Blackwater guards were Iraqis and could be subject to prosecution. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

    Shortly after the Sept. 16 shooting, U.S. officials said they "understood" that there was videotape, but refused to give more details. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release information to the media.

    Following the Nisoor Square shooting, the Interior Ministry banned Blackwater from operating in Iraq but rolled back after the U.S. agreed to a joint investigation. The company resumed guarding a reduced number of U.S. convoys on Friday.

    The al-Maliki aide said Friday that the Iraqis were pushing for an apology, compensation for victims or their families and for the guards involved in the shooting to be held "accountable."

    Hadi al-Amri, a prominent Shiite lawmaker and al-Maliki ally, also said an admission of wrongdoing, an apology and compensation offered a way out of the dilemma.

    "They are always frightened and that's why they shoot at civilians," al-Amri said. "If Blackwater gets to stay in Iraq, it will have to give guarantees about its conduct."

    Allegations against Blackwater have clouded relations between Iraq and the Americans at a time when the Bush administration is seeking to contain calls in Congress for sharp reductions in the 160,000-strong U.S. military force.

    Adding to those strains, President Jalal Talabani demanded the immediate release of an Iranian official detained Thursday by U.S. forces in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.

    The U.S. military said the unidentified Iranian was a member of the Quds force - an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards accused of arming and training Shiite militias in Iraq.

    A statement issued Saturday by Talabani's office said the arrest was carried out without the prior knowledge or the cooperation of the Kurdish regional government.

    "This amounts to an insult and a violation of its rights and authority," said the statement, quoting a letter Talabani sent to Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Talabani, a Kurd, is one of Washington's most reliable partners in Iraq.

    Talabani said Iran had threatened to close the border with the Kurdish region if the official were not freed - a serious blow to the economy in the president's political stronghold.

    "I want to express to you our dismay over the arrest by American forces of this official civilian Iranian guest," Talabani wrote to Petraeus and Crocker.

    Five Iranians said to be linked to the Quds force were arrested in the Kurdish city of Irbil and remain in U.S. custody.

    Also Saturday, the U.S. military announced the death of two more American soldiers - one of an unspecified non-combat related injury and another in a vehicle accident in Diyala province.

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    Associated Press reporters Bushra Juhi and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Tom Foreman Jr. in Raleigh, N.C. contributed to this report.