[Peace-discuss] BBC on Blackwater

[Barbara kessel]

Iraq Shootout Firm Loses Licence
    BBC News

    Monday 17 September 2007

Iraq has cancelled the licence of the private security firm,
Blackwater USA, after it was involved in a gunfight in which at least
eight civilians died.
    The Iraqi interior ministry said the contractor, based in North
Carolina, was now banned from operating in Iraq.

    The Blackwater workers, who were contracted by the US state
department, apparently opened fire after coming under attack in
Baghdad on Sunday.

    Thousands of private security guards are employed in lawless Iraq.

    They are often heavily armed, but critics say some are not
properly trained and are not accountable except to their employers.

    The interior ministry's director of operations, Maj Gen Abdul
Karim Khalaf, said authorities would prosecute any foreign contractors
found to have used excessive force.

    "We have opened a criminal investigation against the group who
committed the crime," he told the AFP news agency.

    All Blackwater personnel have been told to leave Iraq immediately,
with the exception of the men involved in the incident on Sunday.

    They will have to remain in the country and stand trial, the ministry said.

    US Investigation

    The convoy carrying officials from the US state department came
under attack at about 1230 local time on Sunday as it passed through
Nisoor Square in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Mansour.

    The Blackwater security guards "opened fire randomly at citizens"
after mortars landed near their vehicles, killing eight people and
wounding 13 others, interior ministry officials said.

    Most of the dead and wounded were bystanders, the officials added.
One of those killed was a policeman.

    A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Baghdad later confirmed there
had been an incident in which state department security personnel
reacted to a car bomb "in the proximity", and that they had been shot
at.

    "We are taking it very seriously indeed," she told the BBC, adding
that discussions were still taking place about Blackwater's status now
that they had been ordered to leave.

    When asked if Blackwater was complying with the order, the
spokeswoman said she could not comment because the investigation into
the incident was still in progress.

    The BBC's Hugh Sykes in Baghdad says it is generally assumed that
Iraqi courts have no authority over foreign private security
contractors.

    However, the US embassy spokeswoman said the question of their
immunity from prosecution was "one of the many issues" raised by the
incident.

    Blackwater has not yet commented on the incident.

    Civilian Toll

    Sunday's violence followed the publication of a survey of Iraqis
which suggested that up to 1.2m people might have died because of the
conflict in Iraq.

    A UK-based polling agency, Opinion Research Business (ORB), said
it had extrapolated the figure by asking a random sample of 1,461
Iraqi adults how many people living in their household had died as a
result of the violence rather than from natural causes.

    The results lend weight to a 2006 survey of Iraqi households
published by the Lancet, which suggested that about 655,000 Iraqi
deaths were "a consequence of the war".

    However, these estimates are both far higher than the running
total of reported civilian deaths maintained by the campaign group
Iraq Body Count which puts the figure at between 71,000 and 78,000.

    BLACKWATER USA FACTS

Founded in 1997 by three former US Navy SEALs
Headquarters in North Carolina
One of at least 28 Private Security Companies in Iraq
Employs 744 US citizens, 231 third-country nationals, and 12 Iraqis to
protect US state department in Iraq (May 2007)
Provided protection for former CPA head Paul Bremer
Four employees killed by mob in Falluja in March 2004
Personnel have no combat immunity under international law if they
engage in hostilities
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