Also see:
AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications •
Go to Original
Death From All Sides
By Kevin Peraino
Newsweek
Sunday 30 September 2007
An extensive evidence file assembled by
the Iraqi National Police after the controversial Blackwater shooting suggests
that the private contractors opened fire unprovoked from the ground and the
sky.
Since the fatal Sept. 16 Blackwater USA shooting in Baghdad's Nasoor
Square, officials from the private security company have insisted that their
guards were responding to fire from "armed enemies." Yet an extensive
evidence file put together by the Iraqi National Police and obtained by NEWSWEEK - including
documents, maps, sworn witness statements and police video footage - appears
to contradict the contractors' version of events. A confidential incident
report, which has been provided by Iraqi National Police investigators to American
military and civilian officials, concludes that the Blackwater vehicles "opened
fire crazily and randomly, without any reason."
A nine-minute police video made in the moments after the shooting shows helicopters
similar to those used by Blackwater still hovering over the wreckage of charred,
smoking and bullet-pocked cars. (For an edited clip of the video, click here.)
The graphic images include footage of burned human remains and show the street
littered with brass bullet casings. They also show what appears to be a police
officer waving a pistol at the scene; the footage was captured by a different
police officer, who had run over from the nearby Iraqi National Police headquarters.
(Portions of the video have been previously broadcast; it was recorded without
sound.)
Iraqi National Police investigators also believe that Blackwater's helicopters
fired on the cars from above, according to confidential police documents and
interviews with senior police officials. A memo written on Sept. 17 by the lead
Iraqi police investigator states that shortly after the shooting began, "helicopters
opened fire from the air toward the cars and civilians." Gen. Hussein
al-Awadi, the commander of the Iraqi National Police, told NEWSWEEK that the
trajectory of some of the bullet wounds could only have been caused by fire
from the air. "If anyone moved - whenever they saw someone leaving - either
the convoy or the chopper shot him," says Ali Kalaf Salman, an undercover
Iraqi National Police officer who was working as a traffic cop at the scene.
(One of the police documents lists 17 fatalities and many more wounded from
the shooting. Other accounts have put the death toll at 11.)
Blackwater officials have acknowledged that their helicopters were at the scene
of the shooting, but have denied that the guards in the choppers opened fire.
In statements from Blackwater guards provided to the U.S. State Department and
obtained by ABC News, the guards say they were fired upon by uniformed Iraqi
police officers and others dressed in civilian clothes from multiple locations
near the traffic circle. Still images provided to the network show a Blackwater
vehicle pocked with five bullet marks. Anne Tyrrell, a company spokesperson,
said shortly after the incident that the company "acted lawfully and appropriately
in response to a hostile attack in Baghdad ... The 'civilians'
reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies
and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire."
Yet Iraqi policemen and other Iraqi witnesses told NEWSWEEK that the Blackwater
contractors opened fire unprovoked. "No one shot at Blackwater,"
says Col. Faris Saadi Abdul, the lead Iraqi police investigator. "Blackwater
shot without any cause." Al-Awadi, the National Police commander, says
that minutes after he heard the shooting begin, he rushed to the scene, which
is just around the corner from the National Police headquarters. (He says he
was accompanied by a unit of American military trainers embedded with his police.)
"We were trying to figure out why they were shooting," he told a
NEWSWEEK reporter at the National Police headquarters in Baghdad over the weekend.
"We tried to find a reason and we couldn't." He says that his men
searched the civilian cars at the scene, but didn't find any weapons. When Iraqi
investigators later stopped a different Blackwater convoy near the scene of
the shooting, the general says that the Blackwater guards refused to comment
about the incident.
At the Iraqi National Police headquarters in Baghdad on Saturday, witnesses
to the shooting milled around the halls, waiting to provide investigators with
additional statements about the incident. Sirhan Diab, a traffic policeman who
was working in Nasoor Square at the time of the shooting, said that he'd
told his story to at least four separate investigators, including American military
and civilian officials. (He says that as far as he knows, nobody from Blackwater
has contacted him directly.)
The traffic cop, dressed in a crisp white shirt with blue epaulets, told NEWSWEEK
that he had been alerted by radio to the arrival of the Blackwater convoy shortly
before the vehicles approached Nasoor Square, just after noon on Sept. 16. About
30 minutes before, Diab says, he'd heard an explosion in the distance
that sounded like a car bomb, but says that it didn't worry him because
"it was far away." (In the statements obtained by ABC, the Blackwater
guards said that a car bomb exploded near the site of a meeting of the official
that they were protecting, prompting them to evacuate.)
Diab says that he stopped oncoming traffic to allow the Blackwater vehicles
to pass. As the convoy pulled into the circle, according to Diab, the Blackwater
guards began throwing bottles of water from their vehicles - a signal to
stay back. Yet shortly after the convoy slowed to a stop in the circle, he says,
the Blackwater guards "started shooting randomly." One of the bullets
hit the driver of a white Kia that had stopped near the roundabout. (Blackwater
guards have said they felt threatened because they believed the car was continuing
to move toward them.) Diab says that he and another policeman, Ali Kalaf Salman,
rushed to the car and tried to pull open the doors. As they did, the Blackwater
guards intensified their fire.
The Blackwater men said in their written statements that they believed a policeman
was "pushing" one of the vehicles - which the guards suspected
to be a car bomb - toward the circle, which prompted them to fire. When
asked whether he was pushing the Kia, Salman, the undercover police office,
laughs. "When you see someone get shot, you try to help them," he
says. Salman says he was carrying a 9mm Glock, but kept it holstered throughout
the shooting. ABC reported that Blackwater guards also said they saw one person
pull out what appeared to be a trigger device for a bomb. But the Iraqi policemen
suggest that perhaps the edgy Blackwater guards mistook everyday items for lethal
weapons. "I pulled my radio out to call an ambulance, and they shot at
me," says Diab.
When the traffic police arrived at the white Kia, a woman in the car "was
crying and holding her son," says Salman. As the shooting intensified,
the two policemen said they were forced to flee on foot across the square. They
say they looked on as the guards fired at the Kia from all directions. "Whenever
they saw movement inside the vehicle, they started shooting," says Salman.
Eventually, the men said, the Blackwater guards launched larger projectiles - perhaps
rifle-fired grenades - at the white Kia, setting it on fire. The video obtained
by NEWSWEEK shows a large-caliber shell casing at the scene.
The convoy then continued around the traffic circle, according to a confidential
Iraqi police diagram obtained by NEWSWEEK and provided to American investigators.
According to the accompanying incident report, the Blackwater guards opened
fire on an Iraqi Army checkpoint on a nearby road leading away from the square.
The convoy also apparently sideswiped at least one Iraqi civilian vehicle in
the circle. Samir Hobi, 40, says he got out of his car and complained to the
Blackwater guards about the damage. He says one of the guards shouted back:
"Shut up or I'll shoot you."
Iraqi officials have long chafed at what they perceive to be arrogance on the
part of American contractors, and the fact that they are not technically subject
to any local laws. In the immediate aftermath of the Nasoor Square incident
they tried to ban Blackwater from Iraq (though they later relented and agreed
to a joint U.S.-Iraqi investigation of the incident). Iraqi officials have maintained
from the beginning that the incident was unprovoked. The Iraqi National Police
force is itself controversial. A recent report by retired Marine general James
Jones concluded that the force was infiltrated by sectarian loyalists and should
be disbanded.
At times, the official National Police version of events seems to be tinged
with hyperbole. Al-Awadi, the National Police commander, told NEWSWEEK that
there were "hundreds - hundreds - of American vehicles"
on the scene shortly after the incident. That is almost certainly an exaggeration.
Still, the Iraqi police accounts also roughly jibe with the stories of civilian
eyewitnesses interviewed by NEWSWEEK shortly after the shooting. Iraqi officials
have hinted that additional videotapes of the incident may exist that have yet
to be made public. Ultimately, it may take further sifting of the hard evidence
before investigators can determine what really happened at Nasoor Square.
-------
Jump to today's Truthout Features:
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.
Print This Story
E-mail This Story