[NYTr] First Iraqi Lawsuit Targets Blackwater Mercenaries

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Workers World - Oct 25, 2007 issue
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/blackwater-1025

Lawsuit targets Blackwater mercenaries

By Greg Butterfield

In the first lawsuit brought by Iraqi civilians against U.S. mercenary
forces, on Oct. 11 an Iraqi survivor and the families of three Iraqi
men slain by Blackwater personnel in a Sept. 16 attack sued in a U.S.
federal court, charging the private military contractor with “assault
and battery, wrongful death, intentional and negligent infliction of
emotional distress, and negligent hiring, training and supervision.”

Talib Mutlaq Deewan and the estates of Himoud Saed Atban, Usama Fadhil
Abbass and Oday Ismail Ibraheem are being represented by the Center for
Constitutional Rights and the firms of Burke O’Neil LLC and Akeel &
Valentine, P.C.

Also Oct. 11, the United Nations called on the U.S. to prosecute
private security contractors for serious crimes. One of the first laws
foisted on Iraq by the U.S. occupation exempted Washington’s
mercenaries from prosecution in that country.

The attack took place in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. Some 19 people were
killed and dozens more were injured. The Iraqi government and the first
U.S. military personnel on the scene said the massacre appeared
unprovoked. Blackwater denies the charges, saying its agents were
responding in “self defense.”

But an investigation of security photos and other materials by the
Washington Post, published Oct. 12, showed that civilian automobiles
were fired upon through their back windows as they were fleeing the
area. The only evidence of weapons fire was from Blackwater agents.

Attorney Susan Burke, at a news conference in Washington, D.C.,
announcing the lawsuit, said: “This senseless slaughter was only the
latest incident in a lengthy pattern of egregious misconduct by
Blackwater in Iraq. At the moment of this incident, the Blackwater
personnel responsible for the shooting were not protecting State
Department officials. We allege that Blackwater personnel were not
provoked, and that they had no legitimate reason to fire on civilians.

“We look forward to forcing Blackwater and [founder Erik Prince] to
tell the world under oath why this attack happened, particularly since
a Blackwater guard tried to stop his colleagues from indiscriminately
firing.”

The Bush administration quickly strong-armed its puppet regime in
Baghdad to drop the initial demand for Blackwater to leave the country.
According to the Washington Post, the official U.S. investigation into
the Sept. 16 massacre “has already proven to be severely compromised,”
with a Blackwater contractor writing the State Department’s initial
report on the incident and many witnesses not being interviewed.

Col. Steve Lyons, a retired military analyst, told CBS News, “A lot of
that evidence has been destroyed.”

Burke emphasized that she wants to expose that a pattern of “excessive
and unnecessary use of deadly force by [Blackwater] employees is not
investigated or punished in any way.”

Attorneys also plan to expose, as further evidence of this pattern, the
brutal role of Blackwater agents in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina
and Rita, where they served as judge, jury and sometimes executioners
in facilities housing refugees.

The increasing scrutiny of Blackwater, a darling of the Bush
administration, is just one symptom of the growing crisis for the
illegal, U.S.-led occupation of Iraq that began with the invasion and
overthrow of the sovereign Iraqi government in 2003.

There are at least 1,000 armed Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq. The
company was hired in 2003 to guard L. Paul Bremer, the U.S.-appointed
colonial governor of the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority, for
$25 million. Later, as the Iraqi resistance grew and Baghdad became
ungovernable, Blackwater became the official hired gun for State
Department personnel.

These hired killers are an especially despised arm of the hated U.S.
occupation. On March 31, 2004, after resistance fighters killed four
Blackwater mercenaries in Falluja, a crowd of people publicly burned
and hung their bodies.

An increasing number of military personnel and officials have now begun
to criticize Blackwater, attempting to draw a line of differentiation
between the “private” and “official” occupation forces.

Yet on the same day that Blackwater victims filed their lawsuit in
Washington, U.S. military air strikes northwest of Baghdad killed nine
Iraqi children and six women civilians while supposedly targeting “al
Qaeda leaders.”

To read the lawsuit, visit http://www.ccr-ny.org.

Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and
distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without
royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww at workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe at workersworld.net