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Iraq to crack down on foreign security guards

London: The Iraqi government intends to make foreign private security firms answerable under Iraqi law, even if it drives them out of the country, the Human Rights Minister Wijdan Mikha’il Salim said on Monday. The decision follows a spate of incidents in which Iraqi civilians were killed by private contractors working as security guards.

On September 16, up to 17 civilians were killed when guards working for a U.S. firm, Blackwater, opened fire at a busy crossroads in the capital. The firm claims its men fired in self defence, but the Iraqi authorities insist that the foreign security firm shot first.

Ms. Salim said an Iraqi inquiry into the incident would publish its results within two weeks, but she made it clear she had no doubt who was to blame. “The civilians who were killed were not at fault,” she said. “They were only civilians in the way, and they were killed for no reason.”

The Minister, who is visiting Britain, said that unlike soldiers involved in similar incidents, employees of private security firms had in the past only been repatriated by their employers and faced no prosecution.

She said an Iraqi government committee decided that in the future, private security guards should come under the jurisdiction of the national legal system.

“If there are any crimes, they must be under Iraqi criminal law,” she said. “It’s a crime and they must be punished for those crimes.”

Under a 2003 decree signed by Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority and, in effect, the civilian governor at the time, foreign employees of private firms cannot be tried under Iraqi law. That decree was confirmed in 2004, despite the election of a sovereign Iraqi government. Nor have American private bodyguards in Iraq been tried under U.S. law. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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