Blackwater case deepens as investigations multiply
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US and Iraq investigations into powerful private security group Blackwater USA are multiplying as more questions are raised about the firm's actions in a Baghdad shooting that left at least 10 Iraqis dead.
On Friday the US Department of State announced it was sending a team to Iraq led by a senior official to evaluate security measures for US diplomats who have relied on Blackwater and other private security firms for protection in the violence-ridden country.
"My instructions to the panel are simple: their review should be serious, probing and comprehensive," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement about the review.
"Once they have established the baseline facts, I look forward to hearing their recommendations on how to protect our people while furthering our foreign policy objectives."
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also sent off a five-man team to Iraq to investigate relations between US forces and private security contractors, who are often heavily armed with armored vehicles and helicopters.
And in Iraq, a joint US-Iraqi commission to study the security firms was preparing to meet, according to the US embassy in Baghdad.
The enquiries have been sparked by the September 16 shoot-out in which at least 10 Iraqi civilians were killed and 13 wounded by Blackwater guards protecting a State Department official.
Nearly two weeks later, the circumstances of the bloody shoot-out remain blurred, with Iraqis angry and indignant and the country's prime minister having demanded Blackwater's expulsion.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki initially said Washington should immediately replace Blackwater but later backed down and agreed to await the outcome of investigations.
Furious over the killings, the Iraqi government has threatened to try the Blackwater guards under Iraqi law and is preparing legislation to bring supervision of private contractors under its control.
Blackwater, which has some 1,000 people working in Iraq under reportedly 109 million dollars in security contracts with the State Department, insists that its employees only fired after they were fired upon and threatened by a suspicious vehicle.
According to the US television network ABC, Blackwater employees testified in initial investigations that their convoy, which was speeding back to Baghdad's Green Zone near midday after a car bomb went off near where they had been guarding the diplomat in a meeting, were threatened by a white car bearing down on them in Baghdad's busy Nisoor Square.
According to ABC, when the vehicle would not heed signals to halt, the Blackwater team opened fire until it was disabled.
According to the New York Times, citing a US official close to the investigation, the shooting continued even as one Blackwater employee ordered the others to stop firing.
Iraqi witnesses paint a different picture, however, claiming that the Blackwater teams opened fire without provocation.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that five eyewitnesses to the shooting had testified that Blackwater guards fired without provocation, forcing civilians and Iraqi police to run for cover, and that the Iraqi officers did not return fire.
Blackwater's case suffered somewhat more this week with the release of a US Congressional report on the horrific murder of four of its staff in Fallujah on March 31, 2004, an act which sparked a brutal US military assault on the city.
A Congressional committee said that Blackwater had sent the men into the extremely dangerous district on a security mission without proper support or equipment. They were caught by Iraqi attackers and killed, and their charred bodies were later suspended from a bridge.
The report accused the company of having ignored warnings that the mission was too dangerous and of cutting the size of the team to save money.
"These actions raise serious questions about the consequences of engaging private, for-profit entities to engage in essentially military operations in a war zone," the report said.
