Blackwater: Getting away with murder
The killing of 17 Iraqi civilians by Blackwater guards will never become a court case.
“Like the people they were protecting, our Xe professionals were working for a free, safe and democratic Iraq for the Iraqi people. With this decision, we feel we can move forward and continue to assist the United States in its mission to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan find a peaceful, democratic future.”
Joseph Yorio, CEO of Xe Services (formerly known as Blackwater)
On September 16th 2007, a group of Blackwater mercenaries accompanied a convoy of American diplomats through Baghdad. At a lively crossroad, they started shooting. 17 people were killed, all of which were civilians. As witnesses and the Blackwater guards themselves testified, there had been no attack, no provocation.
This crime will never be prosecuted, as a U.S. Judge has dismissed the case based on a formal defect. This decision may be legally correct, but it sheds a dark light on justice when it comes to outsourced military staff – and about the ability of the state attorneys to deal with such cases, as they knew beforehand there was a problem about the guards’ testimonials. And it leaves the Iraqi people once again with the impression America is a reckless occupying force, similarly to the colonial powers of the 19th century.
Blackwater might call themselves Xe Services now, they are still a shame. The U.S. government should should not award them any contracts, and finally bring evidence that Xe is not active any more in Pakistan, as some findings suggest. This company is a failure and a disgrace, and the way it seems to have acted as a spy-, murderer- and torture-subcontractor (I recommend this article by Jeremy Scahill for details), should alone be enough to boot them out and to rethink the strategy of outsourcing warfare to reckless mercenary companies.
In a second step, U.S. Congress and Senate should finally bring on a new version of the amendment to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act from 2000. It had already passed Congress shortly after the shootings in 2007, but has not gone on from there, to my knowledge (please correct me in the comment section if I am wrong).
Further reading:
Francisco Saldaña – Private Military Contractors in Iraq
CRS background analysis from September 2009
Note: The video above is from 2008.
Tags: Blackwater, iraq, Nisour Square, outsourcing, Pakistan, private contractors, US Congress, usa, warfare, Xe Services
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 08:26 and is filed under Globus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.