|
Abu Ghraib
Management and Training
August 6, 2011 AP
The ringleader of Abu Ghraib detainee abuses was
released from jail Saturday after serving 6 1/2 years at Ft. Leavenworth
military prison. Army Spc. Charles Graner, 42, kicked off an international incident after
photos showing him and soldiers under his supervision abusing Iraqi detainees
were released in 2004. Graner was convicted of
offenses that included ordering prisoners to masturbate while soldiers took
photos, stacking naked detainees into a pyramid and knocking out a prisoner
with a punch to the head. His release to the supervision of a parole officer
shocked Iraqis. "He was charged with a crime that shocked the
international community, and then he was released," Hana
Adwar, an Iraqi human rights activist, told the
Associated Press. "I believe that such an act is an attempt to deceive
and blind the Iraqi nation," Adwar said. Seven
other members of Graner's 372nd Military Police
Company, including Pfc. Lynndie England, mother of
a child he fathered while on deployment, and Spc.
Megan Ambuhl, who he married after his conviction,
also pleaded guilty or were convicted of prisoner abuse. Christopher Graveline, a former Army prosecutor, said Graner was a manipulative bully with bad-boy charisma in
his 2010 book "The Secrets of Abu Ghraib
Revealed". Graner, who worked as a private
corrections officer before his stint as an Army reservist, will finish his
obligation to the Army in 2014, said an Army spokeswoman.
October
28, 2005 Macon Telegraph
Abu Ghraib means different things to different
people. For the people of Iraq, it is where tens of thousands of family
members died in Saddam Hussein's death house or were tortured under his
regime. Around the world, it is the scene of the infamous prisoner abuse
scandal that led to U.S. soldiers doing time for war crimes. For retired
Macon firefighter John Wood, it is now home. Before beginning his role as a
civilian firefighter working for Wackenhut Services LLC, Wood spent two weeks
at Camp Victory near Baghdad, Iraq, to get acclimated to the heat. The
prison-turned-military base is home now to some 5,000 detainees, U.S.
soldiers and a multinational force that operates a combat supply hospital,
Wood said. "It just blew me away," Wood said of his arrival at Abu Ghraib. "I didn't know what to expect, and when I
got there, it was beyond my worst expectation."
May
22, 2004 Albuquerque Journal
A senator has made a Department of Justice review critical of operations at
the Santa Fe County jail part of the ongoing controversy over America's
management of prisons in Iraq. A Department of Justice review in March
2003 had harsh words for management of the Santa Fe County jail by Utah-based
Management and Training Corp., criticizing MTC's medical care for inmates and
concluding some conditions violated their constitutional rights. Former
New Mexico corrections secretary O. Lane McCotter
is an MTC executive and was named by Attorney General John Ashcroft to help
rebuild Iraq prisons last year. McCotter's
role in Iraq prisons-- including at Abu Grhaib,
where abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military personnel has sparked a
scandal-- has come under congressional scrutiny. Senator Charles E.
Schumer, D-N.Y., in particular, is making an issue of McCotter's
work in Iraq and why he was chosen to go there. A statement provided by
Schumer's office reviews McCotter's employment
history, including his resignation as Utah prison director in 1997 after a
mentally ill inmate died after spending 16 hours strapped to a chair.
Schumer's news release also calls attention to the Justice report criticizing
MTC's management of the Santa Fe County jail, and notes that the New Mexico
Corrections Department also raised concerns about the jail. "While
McCotter's company was under state and Department
of Justice investigation, Attorney General Ashcroft selected him to serve as
one of four civilian advisers to oversee the reconstitution of Iraqi
prisons," Schumer noted. "Why Attorney General Ashcroft would
send someone with such a checkered record to rebuild Iraq's corrections
system is beyond me," Schumer said.
May
21, 2004 Miami Herald
Although several cases of prisoner abuse by civilians in Iraq have been
referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, the FBI has not
yet been asked to investigate any of them, Director Robert Mueller said
Thursday. What Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed to
indicate that the probe into whether independent contractors or CIA officers
killed prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan is moving more slowly than on the
military front, where one soldier has already been court-martialed and others
have been charged. While the faces of military police have been splashed all
over the news, the names of almost all civilians involved -- employees of
other government agencies and civilian contractors -- were deleted from Maj.
Gen. Antonio Taguba's report on the abuse at Abu Ghraib. Mueller also said lawyers for the Justice
Department and Defense Department are wrestling with jurisdictional issues.
Any crimes at the prison would have been committed on foreign soil against
foreign citizens, creating complicated legal questions. Also Thursday,
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called for a Justice Department probe into two
members of a U.S. group sent to Iraq in May 2003 to help with the
reconstruction of Abu Ghraib. Lane McCotter, a former corrections chief in Utah, and John
Armstrong, who led the prison system in Connecticut, were part of a team
picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft and others in the Bush
administration.
May 21, 2004 NY Times
The use of American corrections executives with abuse accusations in their
past to oversee American-run prisons in Iraq is prompting concerns in
Congress about how the officials were selected and screened. Senator Charles
E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, sent a letter yesterday to Attorney General
John Ashcroft questioning what he described as the "checkered record
when it comes to prisoners' rights" of John J. Armstrong, a former
commissioner of corrections in Connecticut. Mr. Armstrong resigned last year
after Connecticut settled lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties
Union and the families of two Connecticut inmates who died after being sent
by Mr. Armstrong to a supermaximum security prison
in Virginia. In his letter, Mr. Schumer requested that the Justice Department
conduct an investigation into the role of American civilians in the Iraqi
prison system. Another official, Lane McCotter, who
was forced to resign as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in
1997 after an incident in which a mentally ill inmate died after guards left
him shackled naked to a restraining chair for 16 hours, was dispatched by Mr.
Ashcroft to head a team of Americans to reopen Iraq's prisons. After his
resignation in Utah, Mr. McCotter became an
executive of a private prison company, the Management and Training
Corporation, one of whose jails was strongly criticized in a Justice
Department report just a month before the Justice Department sent him to
Iraq.
May 12, 2004 The Nation
In 1997 a 29-year-old schizophrenic inmate named
Michael Valent was stripped naked and strapped to a
restraining chair by Utah prison staff because he refused to take a
pillowcase off his head. Shortly after he was released some sixteen hours
later, Valent collapsed and died from a blood clot
that blocked an artery to his heart. The chilling incident made national news
not only because it happened to be videotaped but also because Valent's family successfully sued the State of Utah and
forced it to stop using the device. Director of the Utah Department of
Corrections, Lane McCotter, who was named in the
suit and defended use of the chair, resigned in the ensuing firestorm. Some
six years later, Lane McCotter was working in Abu Ghraib prison, part of a four-man team of correctional
advisers sent by the Justice Department and charged with the sensitive
mission of reconstructing Iraq's notorious prisons, ravaged by decades of
human rights abuse. While McCotter left Iraq
shortly before the current scandal at Abu Ghraib
began and says he had nothing to do with the MPs who committed the
atrocities, his very presence there raises serious questions about US
handling of the Iraqi prison system. It's bad enough that the Justice
Department picked McCotter--whose reputation in
Utah was at best controversial and at worst disturbing. But further, the
Justice Department hired him less than three months after its own civil
rights division released a shocking thirty-six-page report documenting
inhumane conditions at a New Mexico jail, run by the company where McCotter is an executive. Then, on May 20, in a case
of unfathomable irony, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that McCotter, along with three other corrections experts, had
gone to Iraq. The very same day, Justice Department lawyers began their first
negotiations with Santa Fe County officials over the extensive changes needed
at the jail to avoid legal action.
May 11, 2004 AP
A former New Mexico corrections secretary helped to
reopen an Iraqi prison that is now the center of a prisoner abuse
controversy. O.L. "Lane" McCotter, who
was corrections secretary from the late 1980s to the end of 1990, was in
Baghdad from May to September last year overseeing the reconstruction of the
Abu Ghraib prison. The prison is where pictures
were taken of naked Iraqi prisoners piled on top of one another and
positioned by American soldiers in pretend sex acts. McCotter said his primary duty in
Iraq was to evaluate the structural status of the prisons. McCotter's tenure in this state ended with some
controversy. In October 1988, a court-appointed prison monitor accused state
prison officials of erasing a portion of a videotape of a prison disturbance
to cover up acts of brutality against inmates. McCotter
left New Mexico to run the Utah Corrections Department. But he resigned in
1997, two months after a mentally ill inmate died after spending 16 hours
strapped to a restraining chair. After that incident, McCotter
went to work for a Utah-based private prison company, Management &
Training Corp., which operates the Santa Fe County jail.
May
10, 2004 Salt Lake Tribune
The Abu Ghraib prison, where U.S. military police
were photographed abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners, was rebuilt under
the supervision of two former Utah Department of Corrections directors.
Gary DeLand and O. Lane McCotter
say they were told the project -- financed with money confiscated within Iraq
-- would not be used to detain prisoners of war. McCotter
has first-hand experience with controversy over how prisoners are treated. He
resigned as Utah prison director in May 1997, within two months after a
mentally ill inmate died after spending 16 hours strapped naked to a
restraining chair.
May
5, 2004 Seattle Times
The reports of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners during interrogations
are both horrifying and depressing. Fortunately, there is a clear and proper
legal response. Those accused will be court-martialed and, if found guilty,
they will be punished. But the story, sadly, does not end there. It now
appears that this deeply disturbing episode — in which Iraqi prisoners were
beaten, sexually assaulted and forced to perform simulated sexual acts, among
other things — may have involved not only soldiers but also private
contractors hired as interrogators. That private
contractors are interrogators in U.S. prison camps in Iraq should be
stunning enough. This is incredibly sensitive work and takes our experiment
with the boundaries of military outsourcing to levels never anticipated. But
even more outrageous is the fact that gaps in the law may have given them a
free pass so that it could be impossible to prosecute them for alleged
criminal behavior. To not only pay contractors more than our soldiers
but also give them a legal free pass is unconscionable. More broadly,
the United States must re-examine which military and intelligence roles are
appropriate for outsourcing and which are not. For the roles that we do
choose to outsource, we must close the gaps in the law.
May
2, 2004 The Observer
Photographs of American and British troops humiliating prisoners could change
the public mood across the world. But the coalition has brushed aside similar
complaints for six months. Also pictured is Staff Sergeant Ivan 'Chip'
Frederick, a tall, muscular man, a corrections officer in a Virginia
prison. Frederick, a reservist, occupies a unique position in the
scandal as - in his ever more vocal justification of his behaviour
- he has provided the most coherent insight into how soldiers turned to
abusers in a country they went to liberate. Frederick blames the US
army for its lack of direction from above and says that he will plead not
guilty to any charges made against him. 'We had no support, no training
whatsoever,' he told CBS's 60 Minutes. 'I kept asking my chain of command for
certain things ... like rules and regulations. And it just wasn't
happening.' Frederick makes clear that the abuse was not only for
pleasure but was regarded as part of interrogations led by US intelligence
and private contractors in the prison.
October
16, 2003 AP
A remote-controlled bomb tore apart an armored vehicle in a U.S. diplomatic
convoy Wednesday, killing three American security guards and wounding a
fourth in the first deadly attack on a U.S. target in the Palestinian
territories. The attack, on a convoy of U.S. Embassy diplomats entering Gaza
to interview Palestinian candidates for a Fulbright scholarship, was a
dramatic departure from typical militant operations, which usually target
Israeli soldiers and civilians. It was almost certain to lead to greater U.S.
pressure for a Palestinian crackdown on militant groups. The State
Department identified the slain Americans as John Branchizio,
36; Mark T. Parson, 31; and John Martin Linde Jr.,
30 -- all employees of DynCorp, a Virginia-based security firm. The wounded
American was initially treated at a Gaza hospital before being transferred to
a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
Private Security
Aegis, ArmorGroup, Blackwater, DynCorp, Global Strategies, Group 4, Unity
Resources Group
Oct 22, 2014 nytimes.com
WASHINGTON — Four former Blackwater Worldwide
security contractors were convicted Wednesday on charges stemming from a
deadly 2007 shooting in Iraq. Federal court jurors found one defendant guilty
of murder and three others of manslaughter and weapons charges, roundly
asserting that the shooting was criminal. The defendants showed little
emotion as the lengthy verdict was read. Seventeen Iraqis died when gunfire
erupted on Sept. 16, 2007 in the crowded Nisour
Square in Baghdad. The shooting inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad and
helped solidify the notion that Blackwater,
America’s largest security contractor in Iraq, was reckless and
unaccountable. The former contractors said that they were ambushed by
insurgents and that civilian deaths were the
unfortunate, unintended consequences of urban warfare. The defendants were Blackwater guards. One of them, Nicholas A. Slatten, who the government said fired the first shots,
was convicted of murder. The others — Dustin L. Heard, Evan S. Liberty and
Paul A. Slough — were convicted on manslaughter and firearms charges. Why the
case of four Blackwater guards, accused of
murdering 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square on Sept. 16,
2007, took so long to reach a verdict. Video by Quynhanh
Do on Publish Date August 27, 2014. Photo by Michael Kamber
for The New York Times. Jurors in the United States District Court for the
District of Columbia began deliberating on Sept. 2. They faced a complicated
verdict form that ran 16 pages and required them to consider charges against
each contractor for every victim. They asked few questions and offered no
hints about their discussions. The Nisour Square
shooting, like the Abu Ghraib prison abuses and the
massacre by Marines of 24 Iraqis in Haditha, was a
low point in the Iraq war. Blackwater came to symbolize
American recklessness abroad and became a flash point in the debate over
whether the United States had become too reliant on contractors in war zones.
The shooting occurred when four Blackwater armored
trucks responded to a car bombing. The Iraqis were killed when Blackwater contractors fired into the crowd using machine
guns and grenade launchers. Since then, Iraqis have been skeptical that a
United States court would rule against Americans for shooting Iraqis. That
suspicion grew as the case suffered repeated setbacks, often of the
government’s own making, over many years. There was evidence that State
Department officials had gathered shell casings after the shooting to try to
protect Blackwater. Then, State Department
investigators gave the contractors limited immunity. In 2009, a judge threw
out the charges, citing the Justice Department’s mishandling of evidence. An
appeals court later reinstated the case. The Iraqi government had wanted to
prosecute the Blackwater contractors in Baghdad,
but the American government would not allow it. Manslaughter carries a
sentence of up to 15 years per count, or up to eight years for involuntary
manslaughter. The firearms charge carries a mandatory 30-year prison term.
Murder carries up to life in prison. The trial, which lasted more than two
months, painted a gruesome picture of the shooting incident as several
witnesses traveled from Iraq to testify. An Iraqi traffic officer
demonstrated for jurors how a woman had cradled her dead son’s head on her
shoulder, shortly before her own death. A father sobbed uncontrollably as he
testified about the death of his 9-year-old son. And witnesses from inside
the Blackwater convoy described their former
colleagues as firing recklessly. “I’ve seen people completely unarmed, people
doing nothing wrong, get shot,” Matthew Murphy, a former Blackwater
contractor, testified. He called the Nisour Square
shooting “the most horrible, botched thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” But
the details of the shooting were heavily disputed. The defendants, backed up
by some of the government’s own witnesses, said insurgents had attacked the
convoy with AK-47s assault rifles. Several witnesses testified that they had
seen or heard AK-47 fire. Radio logs showed that the convoy had reported incoming
fire. A radiator line on a Blackwater truck was
ruptured, and photos showed it pocked with what defense lawyers said were
bullet holes. The trial amounted to an epilogue in the story of Blackwater, a company whose fortunes grew with America’s
war on terrorism. It began as a police- and military-training facility in
rural North Carolina and became one of the country’s richest security
contractors. It protected American diplomats, conducted clandestine raids
alongside C.I.A. officers and loaded bombs on Predator drones. But public
outrage over the shooting, coupled with congressional hearings and a lengthy
Justice Department investigation, ultimately led to the company’s demise. It
lost its contracts and was renamed, sold and renamed again.
Oct
7, 2012 Southern Reporter
A BORDERS MSP has vowed to support an Innerleithen mother who has accused a private security firm of
corporate manslaughter following her son’s death in Iraq, writes Kenny
Paterson. Security guard Paul McGuigan, 37,
originally from Peebles, was shot dead by fellow G4S worker Danny Fitzsimmons
in 2009. It is now maintained that the multi-national company were warned
that Fitzsimmons had previous convictions, including an outstanding charge
for a firearms offence. And medical records also appear to show the former
paratrooper had been diagnosed as having post-traumatic stress disorder.
However, he was still employed and sent to Baghdad to work as a security
contractor – and within hours of arriving had murdered former Marine Mr McGuigan, as well as
Australian guard Darren Hoare. Fitzsimmons was found guilty of murdering both
men in 2011 in an Iraqi court and is currently serving a 20-year prison
sentence. Christine Grahame, MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale
and Lauderdale, now plans to meet with Mr McGuigan’s mother, Corinne Boyd-Russell, to discuss the
case. Ms Grahame told TheSouthern: “The additional
evidence that has come forward seems to show the warnings set out to G4S
about the man they employed who went on to kill Mr McGuigan went unheeded. “I want to find out whether there
is an issue of corporate culpability by the employer.” Ms Grahame, a
qualified solicitor, said as the offences took place in Iraq,
the Crown Office cannot take any action. “However, I hope the relevant
authorities will look into this matter,” she added. “There may also be a case
for putting pressure on the Iraqi authorities to look into the company’s
role. “It appears the company were clearly warned
about the mental instability of Mr Fitzsimmons. “Mrs Boyd-Russell will be inundated at the moment, but I
wish to speak to her as soon as possible about the case. “This is a traumatic
case for everyone, not just Mr McGuigan’s
family, but the parents of Mr Fitzsimmons. They are
also the victims. “I am sure if the security company had taken the
appropriate steps in vetting Mr Fitzsimmons, Mr McGuigan would be alive
today.”
October 26, 2010 The Age
PRIVATE soldiers now guarding Australian diplomats in Baghdad shot one of
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's
bodyguards by mistake three years ago and then failed to report it to coalition
forces, a document released by WikiLeaks reveals.
The accidental shooting is only the latest in a series of incidents involving
military contractor Unity Resources Group, which was last year awarded a $9
million contract to guard the Australian embassy in Baghdad. Unity is also
fighting lawsuits filed in the US by the families of two Baghdadi women, Genevia Antranick and Marou Awanis, who were shot
dead by Unity staff several months before the bodyguard's wounding. The
company, owned by several former Australian army soldiers, also notched up 38
shootings in Iraq between 2005 and 2007, according to a book published last
year, Big Boy Rules. In all those cases, Unity investigated itself and found
its use of force justified. The shooting of the bodyguard was revealed at the
weekend when it was released - along with almost 400,000 other secret US
military reports - by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The incident occurred on December 23, 2007,
when Unity guards, then working for the US government's foreign aid arm,
USAID, attempted to enter Baghdad's Green Zone. President Talabani's
bodyguard was in a truck behind the Unity guards. When his vehicle got too
close they fired at the truck's tyre. A bullet
ricocheted and hit the bodyguard, the US report states. Unity then left the
scene without rendering first aid or reporting the incident, as required to
do. ''Unity group did not file an initial report until we contacted the organisation,'' the report records. In a response to
questions by The New York Times - which has had access to the WikiLeaks documents for some months - a Unity official
named Jim LeBlanc said the bodyguard's vehicle had presented itself ''in a
profile consistent with the behaviour of a suicide
attacker''. Unity was unaware that the bodyguard had been injured, Mr LeBlanc said, but co-operated fully with the
investigation. All Unity members were cleared to return to work as a result
of the investigation, he said.
October
16, 2010 The Age
THE security company guarding Australia's Baghdad embassy has been involved
in at least 39 shootings - likely dozens more - and has fostered ''a culture
of lawlessness among its employees'', according to a landmark legal claim
filed against the company in the US. Unity Resources Group, a Dubai-based
security firm, was granted a $9 million-a-year contract with Australia in
2009, despite being responsible for the shooting deaths of an Australian man
and two Baghdadi women in separate incidents in 2006 and 2007. In the 2007
incident a group of Unity guards returning to base after dropping a
''client'' off, fired on a car being driven by Marani
Manook. Between 30 and 40 rounds hit the car, which
also carried Ms Manook's friend Genevia
Antranick, and two other people. Both Ms Manook and Ms Antranick were
killed. Now Ms Antranick's father, Jalal Antranick Askander, is filing a civil claim in a Washington DC
court against Unity and the company they were employed to protect, a shadowy
US research and development organisation, RTI
International. ''Defendants have created and fostered a culture of
lawlessness among their employees and agents, encouraging them to act in
defendants' financial interests and at the expense of the lives of innocent
bystanders,'' the civil claim states. ''Defendants have acted with evil and malicious
intent in promoting their business interests at the expense of innocent human
life. Defendants have earned, and continue to earn, huge profits from the war
in Iraq.'' Liberal senator Russell Trood, who has
been following the Unity issue, says the new suit raises more questions about
whether the company should have been given the multimillion-dollar contract.
''I have concerns about awarding a contract to a company that has a long
history of, if not lawlessness, then certainly a long history of allegations being made about its behaviour,''
Senator Trood said. ''Is the [government] aware of
the current proceedings? And what did they do to determine that Unity was a
fit and proper organisation to be awarded the
contract in light of the US proceedings?'' The Defence
Department was unable to respond to the claims yesterday. The US civil claim
was filed in late August by Washington-based human rights lawyer Paul Wolf.
He said trying to deal with Unity had been an exercise in frustration. ''I
don't know where their office is. We've seen lots of different addresses,''
he said. Ms Antranick's father said his family was
devastated by the loss of a daughter and sister, and felt Unity had acted in
a ''reckless, irresponsible, and inconsiderate'' manner. ''Many private
security firms act recklessly and are unanswerable to [Iraqi] law,'' Mr Askander said.
August
29, 2010 Huffington Report
The most important word in the phrase private security contractors is
"private." If and when someone working for a PSC does something
wrong the company, depending on the offense, may very well fine him, ship him
home, and fire him. But they will do nothing more. They can't, as they
rightfully point out, because they are, after all, a private company and
processes like arrests, prosecutions, convictions and incarceration are
something the state reserves to itself. Well, okay, not necessarily
incarcerations, as anyone familiar with the Corrections Corporation of
America will know, and I'll skip over the obvious old joke about the best legal
defense money can buy, but that is another story. A classic example of this
happened back in December 2006 when an off-duty Blackwater
employee, Andrew J. Moonen, who had been drinking
heavily, tried to make his way into the "Little Venice" section of the
Green Zone, which houses many senior members of the Iraqi government. He was
stopped by Iraqi bodyguards for Adil Abdul-Mahdi,the country's Shi'ite vice president, and shot one of the Iraqis.
Officials say the bodyguard died at the scene. Although Mahdi
wanted the man turned over to the Iraqi government, that
did not happen. Blackwater fired
the contractor and fined him $14,697--the
total of his back pay, a scheduled bonus, and the cost of his plane ticket
home. However, less than two months later he was hired by another private
contractor, Combat Support Associates (CSA),to work
in Kuwait, where he worked from February to August of 2007. Because the State
Department and Blackwater kept the incident quiet
and out of Moonen's personnel records, CSA was unaware
of the December incident when it hired Moonen. Blackwater subsequently acknowledged that the guard had
done wrong but said there was little Blackwater
could do about it. As Erik Prince of Blackwater
said in a congressional hearing: PRINCE:(From tape)
Look, I'm not going to make any apologies for what he did. He clearly
violated our policies . . . we fired him, we fined him, but we as a private organization can't
do any more. We can't flog him, we can't
incarcerate him. That's up to the Justice Department. We are not empowered to
enforce U.S. law. Nine months later a congressional report revealed that the
guard was so drunk after fleeing the shooting
that another group of guards took away the loaded pistol he was fumbling
with. Furthermore, the acting ambassador at the United States Embassy in
Baghdad suggested that Blackwater apologize for the
shooting and pay the dead Iraqi man's family $250,000, lest the Iraqi
government bar Blackwater from working there.
According to the report, Blackwater eventually paid
the family $15,000 after an embassy diplomatic security official
complained that the "crazy sums" proposed by the ambassador could
encourage Iraqis to try to "get killed by our guys to financially guarantee their family's future. Now it
is true that PSC and private military contractors have to act, at least
theoretically, in accordance with all sorts of laws both nationally and
internationally, as well as regulations and directives from government
departments (State and Defense in the case of the United States) as well as
lots of contract language spelled out in the Federal Acquisition Regulations
(FAR) and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations (DFAR). Still, without the
political will of the United States to act there can be no individual
criminal accountability.
August
19, 2010 The Age
THE Australian security firm that shot dead an Australian academic and two
Iraqi women in Baghdad will now guard the government's embassy in the city.
Unity Resources Group, a Dubai security firm created in 2000 by a retired SAS
commander, has been granted a $9 million-a-year contract to provide
"security services" in Baghdad. In a strange twist, that contract
will mean Unity will be guarding the same embassy that investigated it in
2006, after it shot dead Professor Kays Juma, an Australian-Iraqi who was working at a Baghdad
university. Unity defended its actions at the time, saying its staff thought
Professor Juma, an Australian permanent resident,
was a suicide bomber. The Iraqi government later labelled
the company "reckless". The revelation comes as new figures show
Australia has spent at least $25 million on private platoons of bodyguards
and security guards in Afghanistan and Baghdad since 2006. The new Baghdad
contract will mean the government will be paying private security firms about
$14 million a year for security services at two embassies. The figures come
from contracts between the Department of Foreign Affairs, Unity and another
global security firm, Control Risks Group.
June
13, 2010 The Telegraph
The trial of Danny Fitzsimons, who is accused of murdering two colleagues in
a drunken rampage, will open on August 4 unless further medical reports
contradict the assessment. Judge Ali Abbas al-Yousif of the Baghdad central criminal court said
yesterday Mr Fitzsimons had been adjudged by
doctors to be mentally normal and fit to stand trial. But he also allowed an
appeal by Mr Fitzsimons's
lawyers for a second opinion, allowing a re-examination by a second panel of
doctors. Mr Fitzsimons, a former paratrooper, was
working for ArmorGroup, a private security division
of G4S, the former Group 4 Security, last August when he shot two colleagues
and an Iraqi interpreter. The two dead men were Paul McGuigan,
37, a Briton, and Darren Hoare, 37, an Australian, with whom he had been
drinking in a bar in Baghdad's "Green Zone" foreign enclave. He
wounded the interpreter as he tried to run away. Mr
Fitzimons has claimed self-defence,
but his lawyers are also arguing that he was suffering post-traumatic stress
disorder as a result of his years of military service in Iraq. He had
previously been fired from another security company after it was decided he
was too unstable and had been given a suspended sentence for firearms charges
in the previous November. Mr Fitzsimons was facing
further charges after brandishing a gun at a gang of teenagers outside his
flat in Bolton. If he is convicted, he faces the death penalty, though
lawyers say it is more likely that he would receive life in prison, and at
some time be transferred to serve his sentence in Britain.
October
11, 2009 Weekly Standard
There seems no end to contractor abuse scandals in countries fighting
terrorism or undergoing "nation-building." The latest to be
reported in the media involves ArmorGroup North
America, a private security firm guarding the American embassies in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It began in Baghdad on August 9, when an ArmorGroup
employee shot two of his colleagues dead. The victims were Darren Hoare, 37,
an Australian, and Paul McGuigan, 37, a Briton and ArmorGroup executive. The alleged killer, Daniel
Fitzsimons, 33, is also British. ArmorGroup North
America is owned by Wackenhut Services, Inc., a Florida-based company, which
is a division, in turn, of a Danish enterprise, G4S, that advertises itself
as the world's largest security company. The shootings reportedly occurred
late at night, inside the ArmorGroup compound in
Baghdad's international area known as the Green Zone. Fitzsimons, according
to a Baghdad source who declined to be named, is said to have shot his
coworkers because they claimed he was homosexual. After killing them, he shot
an Iraqi, Arkhan Mahdi,
in the leg, then was arrested by Iraqi police (who
now patrol the Green Zone). Fitzsimons faces a possible death sentence. He
will be the first foreigner employed in Iraq since the beginning of the 2003
intervention to be held to account under Iraqi law. Fitzsimons says he cannot
remember the incident. According to the London Sunday Times, Fitzsimons was
seen on an earlier occasion injecting Valium and morphine into his leg while
already drunk. Another trail of misconduct has led to an uproar in Kabul,
where 16 U.S. embassy guards provided by ArmorGroup
were fired in early September for alleged drunkenness and for forcing those
under their control to engage in deviant and humiliating behavior. U.S. press
coverage of the Fitzsimons case has been minimal, and even the contractors'
misbehavior in Kabul, although documented by video, has mostly been handled
with discretion by the print media. The New York Times mentioned "lurid
details" and "lewd conduct" at weekly parties hosted by
embassy guards. The Kabul carousing was disclosed when the Project on
Government Oversight (POGO) released a report on September 1. More
information emerged in a suit filed September 9 by James Gordon, a New
Zealander and former operations director of ArmorGroup
North America. Gordon says he is a "whistle-blower," forced out of
his job after warning company executives and the U.S. Department of State
about the situation at the embassy. According to the New York Times, the POGO
report stated that victims of "deviant hazing" included Afghans,
whose conservative Muslim culture left them especially repelled by such
behavior; those who refused to submit were dismissed from their jobs. The
report described a " 'Lord of the Flies'
environment." Fitzsimons, the accused Baghdad shooter, has been treated
in the British media as a case of post-traumatic stress disorder caused by
his prior military service in Iraq and the Balkans. But it would be a mistake
to blame such dissolution on the stress of war alone. The Green Zone syndrome
of alienation from the local population, as chronicled by critics of the Iraq
war, is a ubiquitous feature of life among foreign administrators in conflict
and post-conflict areas across the globe. Sex trafficking and corruption of
locals have become prominent wherever operations are conducted by
transnational bureaucracies like the United Nations and the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) along with the attendant ranks of
nongovernmental organizations and private contractors. I have observed
similar patterns in the Balkans for a decade.
January
7, 2007 Chicagoist
On Wednesday it was discovered that an Orland Park firefighter was
arrested for felony theft for falsely claiming he was fighting for the
military in Iraq. Lawrence Masa was actually
working for a private security firm in Iraq and was being paid quite well.
During this time Masa made approximately $190,000
as a firefighter and $200,000 as a private security worker. Yesterday, Steven
Slawinski, a Lemont Firefighter, was accused of the
same crime. Slawinski, a friend of Masa, is charged with Felony theft for falsely claiming
he was fighting for the military in Iraq. Slawinski
too was working at a private security firm, getting paid $27,000 from the
Fire Department while in Iraq. Officials looked into Slawinksi's
claims after they realized the relationship between the two and the timing of
both men's return to work. Slawinski was making
$63/hour as a trainer in Iraq. Since the start of the Iraq war tens of
thousands of private security workers have entered the country. With the ease
these two had at falsely producing documents stating they were serving in the
military, we assume this is much more of a widespread problem. This is just
another addition to the slew of problems we face with private military
contractors in Iraq. The U.S. Department of State currently recognizes 28
Security Companies doing business in Iraq, it is not
known which company Masa and Slawinski
were working for, but our look into the companies shows two which specialize
in both fire and security. Baghdad Fire and Security is described as
providing the following services, "Fire protection and security
equipment supply. Install, maintain and commission these systems. Physical
security and demining." The second, Group 4 Falck
A/S, provides, "Cashing sorting. Ambulance services (vehicles and
professional staff). Firefighting services (vehicles, products and
professional staff). Prisons and prison management. Global solutions.
Facility management and training services." The State Department's
disclaimer regarding these companies is, "The U.S. government assumes no
responsibility for the professional ability or integrity of the persons or
firms whose names appear on the list." The other problems we mentioned
above, include abuse at Abu Ghraib (following these
allegations the companies involved were awarded additional Pentagon
contracts) and a video of firms shooting at Iraqi citizens. Needless to say,
previously these firms were acting without any regard for, and any
repercussions from, the law. With five words slipped into the most recent
Pentagon Budget, however, this should change. Previously, if Congress had not
declared war the Military had no jurisdiction over security contractors.
Essentially leaving Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan as playgrounds for
the firms. We don't discredit the risk the workers of these firms take, but
it only makes sense they have some sort of moral authority guiding them. The
amendment included in the budget bill simply took the word "war"
and replaced it with "declared war or a contingency operation." The
Defense Tech article suggests that Journalists embedded in contingency
operation zones could also be subject to the change, but this will most
likely not remain true as embedded journalists are unarmed and not considered
contractors.
November
27, 2005 Telegraph UK
A "trophy" video appearing to show security guards in Baghdad
randomly shooting Iraqi civilians has sparked two investigations after it was
posted on the internet, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal. The video has
sparked concern that private security companies, which are not subject to any
form of regulation either in Britain or in Iraq, could be responsible for the
deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqis. The video, which first appeared on a
website that has been linked unofficially to Aegis Defence
Services, contained four separate clips, in which security guards open fire
with automatic rifles at civilian cars. All of the shooting incidents
apparently took place on "route Irish", a road that links the
airport to Baghdad. Last night a spokesman for defence
firm Aegis Defence Services - set up in 2002 by Lt
Col Tim Spicer, a former Scots Guards officer - confirmed that the company
was carrying out an internal investigation to see if any of their employees
were involved. The Foreign Office has also confirmed that it is investigating
the contents of the video in conjunction with Aegis, one of the biggest
security companies operating in Iraq. The company was recently awarded a £220
million security contract in Iraq by the United States government. Aegis
conducts a number of security duties and helped with the collection of ballot
papers in the country's recent referendum. Lt Col Spicer, 53, rose to public
prominence in 1998 when his private military company Sandlines
International was accused of breaking United Nations sanctions by selling
arms to Sierra Leone. Capt Adnan Tawfiq of the Iraqi Interior Ministry which deals with
compensation issues, has told the Sunday Telegraph
that he has received numerous claims from families who allege that their
relatives have been shot by private security contractors travelling in road
convoys. He said: "When the security companies kill people they just
drive away and nothing is done. Sometimes we ring the companies concerned and
they deny everything. The families don't get any money or compensation. I
would say we have had about 50-60 incidents of this kind."
September
10, 2005 NY Times
The private security company that guards Baghdad International Airport shut
down the airport on Friday, saying it had not been paid for the past six
months. But the company, Global Strategies Group, announced early Saturday
that it had agreed to reopen the airport on Saturday morning after a promise
by the Iraqi government to pay half the amount owed. The shutdown on Friday
nearly led to a standoff between American military forces and Iraqi soldiers
when United States forces rushed to the airport to prevent Iraqi troops from
taking it over, according to Iraqi officials and the security company. After
Global Strategies closed the airport at dawn on Friday, infuriated Iraqi
ministry officials dispatched their own troops to secure the airport. But the
Iraqis turned back to avoid a confrontation with American soldiers who had
already hurried to the airport from their nearby base, according to Iraqi
officials and Global Strategies. Global Strategies has offices in London;
Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates; and Washington. The
company shut down the airport for 48 hours in June over the nonpayment, he
said, but went back on the job after assurances of a resolution. He said the
airport could be reopened for civilian passengers by 8 a.m. Saturday.
November
5, 2004 Mother Jones
WHEN THE BUSH administration turned over much of its Iraqi
security operations to the private sector last year, one of the companies
that stood to profit was the London-based Hart Group. Hart Group needed to hire
170 English-speaking guards with military experience -- and it had to do it
fast. “We had to recruit people in very, very short order,” says Simon
Falkner, the company’s chief of operations. But Falkner knew exactly where to
find many of his recruits: in South Africa, where soldiers trained under that
country’s apartheid regime now often find themselves unemployable. Hart’s
hiring practices might have passed entirely unnoticed had one of the
company’s employees not died in a firefight with Iraqi insurgents last
spring. The victim was 55-year-old Gray Branfield,
a former covert-operations specialist in South Africa’s fight to preserve
white minority rule. In the early 1980s, the apartheid government decided to
assassinate the top 50 African National Congress (ANC) officials living
beyond the country’s borders, and Branfield was
charged with tracking down apartheid opponents in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and
Zambia. In July 1981, Branfield’s team was assigned
to hunt down Joe Gqabi, the ANC’s chief
representative in Zimbabwe and the operations chief of its militant wing
there. After two weeks searching for their quarry, Branfield’s
team located Gqabi at a house in a working-class
suburb of Harare. With Uzis and Berettas beneath their coats, they climbed
over a fence and waited until the anti-apartheid activist emerged from the
house. Then the soldiers jumped from the bushes and pumped 19 bullets into Gqabi at close range. How did a political assassin end up working for the
U.S. government in Iraq? The answer illuminates an ominous aspect of what can
happen when the business of war is handed over to the private sector. To
an unprecedented degree, the United States and its allies have turned to
private companies to fill tens of thousands of jobs once performed only by
soldiers, from prison interrogators to bodyguards for high-ranking officials.
The Pentagon says it is not in the business of policing contractors’ hiring
practices -- and that concerns military watchdogs, who believe this creates a
climate where human rights are seen as secondary. “The point is not lost on
people working in the private security market that the United States has
hired companies with cowboy reputations,” says Deborah Avant,
director of the Institute for Global and International Studies at George
Washington University.
Yet even as the Iraq war was gearing up, observers warned that replacing
soldiers with contractors could cause accountability problems. “We have
individuals who are not obligated to follow orders or follow the Military
Code of Conduct,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, told Mother
Jones last year. “Their main obligation is to their employer, not to their
country.” Schakowsky’s fears were realized at Abu Ghraib.
Long before the infamous prison became a household name, the U.S. Justice
Department awarded the research and engineering company SAIC a contract to
help reconstruct the Iraqi prison system. SAIC in turn hired four former
corrections officials from the United States who had been involved in
prisoner-abuse cases. One of them, Gary DeLand,
once ran a Utah jail where a mentally ill inmate arrested for nonviolent
disorderly conduct was held naked and alone for 56 days without lights,
recreation, windows, bedding, or a toilet -- and without a hearing. Both SAIC
and officials at the Justice Department have declined to comment.
October
28, 2004 New & Observer
Jerry Zovko’s contract with Blackwater
USA looked straightforward: He would earn $600 a day guarding convoys that
carried food for U.S. troops in Iraq. But that cost – $180,000 a year – was
just the first installment of what taxpayers were asked to pay for Mr. Zovko’s work. Blackwater, based
in Moyock, N.C., and three other companies would add to the bill, and to
their profits. Several Blackwater contracts
obtained by The News & Observer open a small window into the
multibillion-dollar world of private military contractors in Iraq. The
contracts show how costs can add up when the government uses private military
contractors to perform tasks once handled by the Army. "There is no
question the taxpayer is getting screwed," said Mr. Bunting,
who was an Army staff sergeant in Vietnam. "There is no incentive for
KBR or their subs to try to reduce costs. No matter what it costs, KBR gets
100 percent back, plus overhead, plus their profit.
October
9, 2004 LA Times
One of the highest-profile security companies in Iraq has been suspended
from doing business with the U.S. government after being accused of
overbilling millions of dollars through a series of sham companies. Custer Battles,
a security firm based in Virginia, sent fake bills to the U.S.-led Coalition
Provisional Authority that had run Iraq during the U.S. occupation, according
to an Air Force memo obtained by The Times. The company, which provided all
security at the Baghdad airport, is also the target of a lawsuit unsealed
Friday that accuses employees of systematically bilking U.S. taxpayers and
threatening one worker and his 14-year-old son at gunpoint. The firm, which
has a former Republican candidate for Congress as one of its principals, is
the latest in a string of companies linked to Republicans that have been
accused of wrongdoing in Iraq. The company is also under
investigation by the FBI and the Pentagon inspector general's Defense
Criminal Investigative Services, the memo said. The suspension means that no
government agency can issue further contracts to Custer Battles, which had
grown from a handful of employees to more than 700 during its time in Iraq.
In the lawsuit, known as a false claims action, former employee William
Baldwin and a Custer Battles subcontractor named Robert Isakson repeated some
of the accusations found in the Air Force memo. The false claims complaint
said that after Isakson complained about Custer Battles practices, he and his
14-year-old son were held at gunpoint by company employees. The employees
then kicked Isakson and his son off the airport base, leaving him to take a
taxi through war-torn Fallouja to return to Jordan.
September
27, 2004 Government Executive
The Government Accountability Office has denied a protest from American
security services firm DynCorp International LLC of the Army's controversial
award of a $293 million contract in March to British firm Aegis Defense
Services Ltd. to coordinate and manage the activities of security contractors
operating in Iraq. DynCorp, a heavyweight in the global security services
market, also had bid on the contract. The firm is owned by Computer Sciences
Corp. of El Segundo, Calif. The award to Aegis surprised many because the
company had no experience in the Middle East, and its main shareholder, Tim
Spicer, a former lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards, has been at the
center of a number of controversial business deals, including a 1998
arms-smuggling operation in Sierra Leone in violation of a United Nations
arms embargo.
September
2, 2004 Government Executive
The president and chief executive officer of CACI International Inc., whose
employees were hired by the Army to perform interrogations in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, defended his employees' qualifications and
took issue with some specific findings of a recent Army report on alleged
prison abuses. In an interview, J.P. "Jack" London called the
investigation "a very complicated topic." But he sought to clarify
a number of points concerning the CACI interrogators' experience and
training, as well as their work at Abu Ghraib.
According to London, no more than 10 CACI interrogators worked at the prison
complex at any given time. "The language in that report is a bit
unfortunate," London said of the investigation recently completed by
Maj. Gen. George Fay. "It gives the impression that [CACI interrogators]
were sent over there and didn't know what the hell they were doing, which is
patently not the facts of the matter." The Fay report recommended that
the Army's general counsel consider referring three CACI employees to the
Justice Department for prosecution, alleging that they abused
detainees. London said all his employees met the requirements in the
contract's statement of work. CACI received more than 1,600 résumés from
prospective interrogators, he said, and winnowed the pool to fewer than 50.
"We had quite a massive effort to find people," he said.
London said all employees had levels of training that met military standards.
"The statement of work did not require explicit and solely military
training," London said. It permitted "an equivalency category that
would come from other sources of similar training. Other agencies have those
kinds of skills that they pass on." London cited the FBI and the CIA as
examples, but he didn't specify where CACI interrogators were trained.
The Fay report cited some interrogators' lack of formal military training as
a cause for concern. The Army inspector general has found that about 35
percent of the CACI interrogators had not received military training, a
figure that London didn't dispute. The Fay report also cited "numerous
statements" from military and civilian employees at Abu Ghraib indicating the contractors received "little,
if any, training" on the Geneva conventions, which governs treatment of
detainees in war zones. "It needs to be made clear that contractor
employees are bound by the requirements of the Geneva conventions," the
report said. Before interrogators went to Iraq, London said, they received
briefings from military officials on the rules of interrogation. He said some
interrogators also received training while working in Abu Ghraib.
For example, Army mobile training teams instructed a number of CACI
interrogators in Iraq on the interrogation process. The teams came from Ft.
Huachuca, Ariz., home of the Army's intelligence training school, and from
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, site of another detention and interrogation facility.
The Fay report noted that several military personnel "expressed some
concerns about what appeared to them to be a lack of experience with some of
the civilian contracted CACI interrogators, and the fact that the [mobile
training teams] did not have the opportunity to train and work with some
newly arriving contractors." London also countered the Fay
report's assertion that some CACI employees may have been supervising
military personnel. The report states that, "Several people indicated .
. . that contractor personnel were 'supervising' government personnel, or
vice versa." An Army sergeant "indicated that CACI employees were
in positions of authority, and appeared to be supervising government
personnel." One contractor was "listed as being in charge of
screening" of detainees on an organization chart, "with military personnel
listed as subordinates." The Fay investigation also found
that a CACI employee helped a military officer write the contract's
requirements, potentially a violation of federal acquisition regulations.
CACI's legal counsel, William Koegel, said, "We
are confident that no one associated with CACI crossed any lines in
connection with the preparation of the statement of work."
April 21, 2003 The Times
A subsidiary of El Segundo-based Computer Sciences Corp. is among a handful
of U.S. defense contractors secretly invited to submit bids for a long-term
contract to rebuild Iraq's national police force, prisons and judiciary,
according to State Department officials. The CSC subsidiary, DynCorp of
Reston, Va., already is recruiting 150 current and former U.S. law
enforcement offices for Iraq under an International Police Missions contract
first award in 1996 for work in the Balkans, State Department officials said.
CSC acquired DynCorp last month. The new contract DynCorp is seeking would be
far more extensive, providing as many as 1,00 advisors to recruit, retrain
and reequip Iraq's national police and prison staffs, State Department
spokesman Richard A. Boucher said Thursday. The police, prisons and judiciary
contract is one in a series exempted from the U.S. government's usual
requirement for "full and open competition."
|
