US-Iraq Security Agreement Forgets Blackwater
Yesterday, the Associated Press ran the headline US Contractors Lose Immunity in Iraq Security Deal.
But, if what comes to your mind when you think of US contractors operating in Iraq with immunity is, for example, the indiscriminate shooting and killing of civilians by Blackwater personnel, read the fine print – the new assertion of joint Iraqi-US jurisdiction doesn’t apply to companies contracted by anyone other than the Defense Department.
This means Blackwater personnel working on a contract with the State Department — the same one under which Nisoor Sq killings occurred – are good to go with Iraqi immunity.
There are murmurings that US State Department contractors will be subject of similar, future agreements. It’s not clear why this agreement couldn’t have defined contractors more broadly to begin with.
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Tags: amnesty international, Blackwater, Business and Human Rights, Department of Defense, Department of State, DOD, human rights, indiscriminate killings, iraq, Iraq human rights, Military contractors, Security Agreement, security contractors, united states
August 19th, 2009 at 11:23 am
[...] Square killings of 2007, the Iraqi license denial, the contract with the State Department, the US-Iraq Security Agreement and what this all means for corporate accountability on the [...]
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