Blackwater Back in the News

Blackwater is back in the news again -- TIME Magazine's Adam Zagorin and Brian Bennett have copies of a document that show that the North Carolina private security company's employees shot and killed eight Iraqis in a firefight.

"The skirmish occurred at 12:08 p.m. on Sunday when, "the motorcade was engaged with small arms fire from several locations" as it moved through a neighborhood of west Baghdad. "The team returned fire to several identified targets" before leaving the area. One vehicle engine was hit and disabled by bullets and had to be towed away. A separate convoy arriving to help was "blocked/surrounded by several Iraqi police and Iraqi national guard vehicles and armed personnel," the report says. Then an American helicopter hovered over the traffic circle, as the U.S. convoy departed without casualties. Some reports have said the helicopter also opened fire on Iraqis, but a Blackwater official told TIME that no shots were fired from the air."

The Iraqi government says it has revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq, although CorpWatch understands from knowledgable insiders that the company's license (issued by the Ministry of Interior) had expired a while ago. Although the Ministry has issued licenses to a number of private security contractors, many companies do not bother to get licenses because they know that there is no enforcement mechanism against them. Indeed, Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued an executive order that specifically gave private contractors in Iraq immunity from prosecution.

Erica Razook of Amnesty International's Business and Human Rights Program has provided an excellent summary of the legal issues around this thorny matter of human rights violations by private security contractors, which can be downloaded here. You can also see her testifying before U.S. Congress on the implications of this legal vacuum, in which she noted that the contractors operate in a "culture of impunity" with "virtually no control or oversight." "A contractor can shoot an Iraqi civilian in the street and face no consequences," she said.

A few months ago, we listed a number of similar incidents in which private contractors were involved in violent clashes in Iraq, which we reprint below:

A Blackwater security guard shot dead the personal bodyguard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi last Christmas Eve. Yet seven months later, the contractor has not been charged with any crime.

The admission by Blackwater that one of their security guards shot dead an Iraqi man confirms worries that armed contractors working directly or indirectly for the U.S. government have been involved in killing Iraqi civilians and that they have escaped the rule of law in Iraq or in the United States.

An article in the Washington Post in September 2005 quoted Brigadier General Karl R. Horst, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is responsible for security in and around Baghdad. "These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place."

The article described the shooting of an Iraqi man named Ali Ismael in Erbil, Northern Iraq by unnamed U.S. private security contractors.

Nor is Blackwater the only company to have been accused of shooting at Iraqi civilians with an intent to kill.

* In July 2006, two security contractors working for Triple Canopy in Iraq witnessed their boss shoot at Iraqi civilians.

Shane B. Schmidt, a former Marine Corps sniper, and Charles L. Sheppard III, a former Army Ranger, have sued the company, which they say fired them after they filed a report on July 8 that their shift leader fired deliberately and unnecessarily at Iraqi vehicles and civilians in two incidents while their team was driving in Baghdad.

Schmidt and Sheppard's lawsuit claims that the Triple Canopy employee announced that he was ''going to kill someone today,'' stepped from his vehicle and fired several shots from his M4 assault rifle into the windshield of a stopped white truck. The men claim that the truck was not an evident threat and that their team was not in danger. The men say in the suit that the shift leader then returned to their truck and said, ''That didn't happen, understand.'' Later that day, the suit says, the shift leader said, ''I've never shot anyone with my pistol before,'' and then opened the vehicle door and fired seven or eight shots into the windshield of a taxi.

* Custer Battles, another U.S. security company, was accused of shooting at Iraqis in February 2005, in an investigative report by NBC News. Titled  "U.S. Contractors in Iraq Allege Abuses." The report quotes four former U.S. soldiers.

"[He] sighted down his AK-47 and started firing," says (Corporal Ernest) Colling. "It went through the window. As far as I could see, it hit a passenger. And they didn't even know we were there."

Later, the convoy came upon two teenagers by the road. One allegedly was gunned down.

"The rear gunner in my vehicle shot him," says Colling. "Unarmed, walking kids."

In another traffic jam, they claim a Ford 350 pickup truck smashed into, then rolled up and over the back of a small sedan full of Iraqis.

"The front of the truck came down," says (Captain Bill) Craun. "I could see two children sitting in the back seat of that car with their eyes looking up at the axle as it came down and pulverized the back."

* CorpWatch's David Phinney was among one of the first reporters to chronicle the infamous "Trophy Video" in November 2005, in which security contractors for Aegis, a British company, in Iraq, were seen shooting at Iraqi civilians.

David Phinney also broke the story of another North Carolina company named Zapata, whose security guards allegedly fired at U.S. Marines in Fallujah in May 2005.