Iraqi in Blackwater case rejects compensation as too ‘low’, calls for government intervention

Iraqi in Blackwater case rejects compensation deal

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi injured by the U.S. private security firm once known as Blackwater said Sunday he would not accept a compensation deal for injuries he suffered after company employees opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square because the amount of money offered is too low.

Mahdi Abdul-Kadir was speaking about a civil lawsuit that is separate from the criminal case brought against the company, whose dismissal has become a lightening rod for Iraqi resentment over the behavior of private security companies and prompted Iraqi politicians to denounce the U.S. justice system.

Abdul-Kadir said Blackwater’s offer of compensation to those who had been injured or had family members killed was too low. He said he has asked the deputy speaker of Iraq’s parliament to cancel the agreement that the plaintiff’s lawyer Susan Burke reached Jan. 6.

“We have rejected the settlement because it is a small amount. We won’t accept such an amount,” he said.

None of the plaintiffs had yet received any money from the group, now known as Xe Services, he said. It is not clear how many, if any, other plaintiffs will follow Abdul-Kadir’s lead and continue to fight the company in court.

Another plaintiff had said the company had offered $30,000 for each person wounded in the 2007 incident in Nisoor Square and $100,000 to the families of the 17 killed.

On Dec. 31, a U.S. federal judge threw out criminal charges against the company regarding the Nisoor Square killings, citing mistakes by prosecutors. Many Iraqis saw the decision as a confirmation of a long-held suspicion that U.S. security contractors were above the law. The Iraqi government vowed to pursue the case and U.S. senator John McCain expressed his hope that it would be appealed.

The killing of 17 civilians were the deadliest in a string of incidents in which private security companies in Iraq were accused of behavior veering between the reckless and the criminal.

The complaints ranged from armed contractors shooting in the air or at motorists to clear cars away from convoys they are guarding, to charges that another Blackwater guard, Andrew Moonen, fatally shot a guard for an Iraqi vice president on Christmas Eve of 2006 after getting drunk at a party.

Moonen’s lawyer described the incident as self-defense.

An October 2007 report by a House of Representatives committee called Blackwater an out-of-control outfit indifferent to Iraqi civilian casualties. Blackwater chairman Erik Prince insisted the company had always acted appropriately.

On Friday, Iraqi security forces raided the headquarters of a private security company in Baghdad after receiving information that its license to operate had expired. Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, Baghdad’s chief military spokesman, said about 20,000 bullets and 400 weapons, mostly rifles, were confiscated but no arrests were made.

Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, the deputy interior minister, said the raid had nothing to do with the Blackwater case. It was part of a wider crackdown on unlicensed private security companies launched in the past few days, he said.

Private security contractors, who protect many expatriates living in Iraq, including diplomats and foreign reconstruction teams, say it can take months to renew a license to operate and that the process is deeply corrupt and subject to unexplained delays.