Reuters | Jan 3, 2010

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq will help victims of the 2007 shooting of civilians in Baghdad to file a U.S. lawsuit against employees of security firm Blackwater, an incident that turned a spotlight on the United States’ use of private contractors in war zones.

Last week, a U.S. judge threw out charges against five guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad traffic circle, saying the defendants’ constitutional rights had been violated.

Iraq called that decision “unacceptable and unjust” and, as well as supporting a lawsuit brought by Iraqis wounded in the shooting and families of those killed, it will ask the U.S. Justice Department to review the criminal case, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on Sunday.

“The government will facilitate a lawsuit from Iraqi citizens to sue the guards and the company in a U.S. court,” he said.

The guards from Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe Services, say they shot across a crowded intersection in self-defense after hearing an explosion and gunfire.

But an Iraqi whose young son was killed in the incident said they indiscriminately fired at cars.

The shooting strained relations between Washington and Baghdad and became a symbol for many Iraqis of foreigners’ disregard for their lives.

Dabbagh said the court had “rejected the case on form, and not on its merits.”

Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, private guards protecting U.S. personnel were given immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. That ended with a bilateral agreement that took effect last year.

The five guards were charged in a U.S. federal court with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 of attempting to commit manslaughter and one weapons violation. A sixth Blackwater guard pleaded guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Dabbagh said Iraq was conducting an investigation into whether current or former Blackwater employees were still operating in the country, including with other firms.

He said Iraq did not want them on its soil, but did not say whether they would be expelled.

“We do not want any member of this company, which committed more than one crime in Iraq, to work in Iraq.”

In a speech to Iraq’s parliament on Sunday, lawmaker Omar al-Jubouri suggested a way the government could retaliate for the decision of the U.S. courts.

“Ask the Iraqi courts to release all the (Iraqi) defendants … sentenced to death for killing Americans in Iraq, as an act of reciprocity with the U.S. judicial system,” he said.

(Reporting by Mohammed Abbas; writing by Missy Ryan; editing by Angus MacSwan)

BBC | Jan 1, 2010

Iraq has criticised a US judge’s dismissal of all charges against guards from US security firm Blackwater over the killing of 17 Iraqis in 2007.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said an Iraqi investigation showed the men had committed a “serious crime” and Baghdad would seek to prosecute them.

The five had all pleaded not guilty to manslaughter. A sixth guard admitted killing at least one Iraqi.

The judge dismissed the charges against the guards over procedural errors.

District Judge Ricardo Urbina said the US justice department had used evidence prosecutors were not supposed to have.

Mr al-Dabbagh said the Iraqi government “regrets and is disappointed by the US court’s decision”.

“Inquiries carried out by the Iraqi government clearly confirm that the Blackwater guards committed a crime and used weapons when there was no threat necessitating the use of force,” he said.

He said Iraq would “act forcefully and decisively to prosecute the Blackwater criminals”.

The Iraqi human rights minister, Wejdan Mikhail, said she was “astonished” by the US move.

“There was so much work done to prosecute these people and to take this case into court and I don’t understand why the judge took this decision,” the AFP news agency quoted her as saying.

The commander of US forces in Iraq, Gen Ray Odierno, said the court’s decision could create local resentment against other security firms operating in the country.

“Of course we’re upset when we believe that people might have caused a crime and they are not held accountable,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

The killings, which took place in Nisoor Square, Baghdad, strained Iraq’s relationship with the US and raised questions about US contractors operating in war zones.

A man whose son died in the incident said he was surprised to hear the guards had been acquitted.

“But what can we do? We cannot do anything with the US government and their law,” he told Reuters.

Lawyers for the five guards say they were acting in self-defence, but witnesses and family members of those killed maintain that the shooting on 16 September 2007 was unprovoked.

A civil case against Blackwater brought by Iraqis – including relatives of some of the Nisoor Square victims – is still before a Virginia court.

It alleges that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings.

CP | Jan 1, 2010

By Rebecca Santana

BAGHDAD — Iraqis seeking justice for 17 people shot dead at a Baghdad intersection responded with bitterness and outrage Friday at a U.S. judge’s decision to throw out a case against a Blackwater security team accused in the killings.

The Iraqi government vowed to pursue the case, which became a source of contention between the U.S. and the Iraqi government. Many Iraqis also held up the judge’s decision as proof of what they’d long believed: U.S. security contractors were above the law.

“There is no justice,” said Bura Sadoun Ismael, who was wounded by two bullets and shrapnel during the shooting. “I expected the American court would side with the Blackwater security guards who committed a massacre in Nisoor Square.”

What happened on Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007, raised Iraqi concerns about their sovereignty because Iraqi officials were powerless to do anything to the Blackwater employees who had immunity from local prosecution. The shootings also highlighted the degree to which the U.S. relied on private contractors during the Iraq conflict.

Blackwater had been hired by the State Department to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said they were ambushed at a busy intersection in western Baghdad, but U.S. prosecutors and many Iraqis said the Blackwater guards let loose an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine-guns and grenades.

“Investigations conducted by specialized Iraqi authorities confirmed unequivocally that the guards of Blackwater committed the crime of murder and broke the rules by using arms without the existence of any threat obliging them to use force,” Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement Friday.

He did not elaborate on what steps the government planned to take to pursue the case.

The shootings led the Iraqi government to strip the North Carolina-based company of its license to work in the country, and Blackwater replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services.

Five guards from the company were charged in the case with manslaughter and weapons violations. The charges carried mandatory 30-year prison terms, but a federal judge Friday dismissed all the charges.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina cited repeated government missteps in the investigation, saying that prosecutors built their case on sworn statements that the guards had given with the idea that they would be immune from prosecution.

That explanation held little sway with Iraqis outraged over the case.

Dr. Haitham Ahmed’s wife and son were both killed in their car during the shooting.

“The rights of our victims and the rights of the innocent people should not be wasted,” he said.

Iraqis have followed the case closely and said the judge’s decision demonstrated that the Americans were considered above the law.

“I was not astonished by the verdict because the trial was unreal. They are using double standards and talking about human rights, but they are the first to violate these rights. They are killing innocents deliberately,” said Ahmed Jassim, a civil engineer in the southern city of Najaf.

Dozens of Iraqis have filed a separate lawsuit alleging that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings and beatings. That civil case was not affected by Urbina’s decision and is still before a Virginia court.

Mohammed al-Kinani, whose son was killed, said he had been invited once to the U.S. by the Justice Department as a witness but said he went two more times after that to follow the case.

“I will not despair,” he said.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general in Iraq, said he understood that people would be upset with the decision.

“Of course people are not going to like it, because they believe that these individuals conducted some violence and should be punished for it, but the bottom line is, using the rule of law, the evidence is not there,” he said. “I worry about it because clearly there were innocent people killed in this attack.”

Of all the private security companies that mushroomed in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion, Blackwater was the most well-known and vilified.

Their employees were at the centre of what is considered one of the key moments of the war. A vehicle with four Blackwater employees driving through the western city of Fallujah, a centre of the Sunni insurgency, was hit by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in March 2004. Their charred, mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates river.

The bloody incident was one of the key reasons the U.S. military attacked Fallujah in April 2004.

Another Blackwater guard, Andrew Moonen, was accused by the family of a guard for an Iraqi vice-president of shooting and killing the guard without provocation on Christmas Eve of 2006 after Moonen got drunk at a party in the Green Zone and then got lost. Moonen’s lawyer has described the incident as self-defence.

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 told the committee that the company acted appropriately at all times.

Were the incident to happen again today, the legal outcome might be much different. The U.S.-Iraqi security pact that took effect Jan. 1, 2009, lifted the immunity that foreign contractors had in Iraq. A British security contractor accused of shooting two colleagues is currently being held in Iraq and could be the first Westerner to face an Iraqi court since the immunity was lifted.

Associated Press Writers Katharine Houreld, Saad Abdul-Kadir and Bushra Juhi contributed to this report.

guardian.co.uk | Jan 1, 2010

by Martin Chulov

When a Blackwater convoy approached Baghdad’s fortified green zone just after midday on 16 September, 2007, the hundreds of Iraqi drivers inching through the choking traffic witnessed a familiar scene.

Iraqi guards waved through three armoured trucks towards a military lane spilling off Nissour Square in the central city. Any private vehicle that even tries to enter is often fired on.

Abdul Wahad Abdul-Kahad remembers grinding to a stop as non-Iraqi guards cleared a path for a second Blackwater convoy. A helicopter hovered overhead.

“It was about noon,” he recalled. ”I heard a bursts of fire enter the car in front of me. It caught fire and a lady and her son were killed. I tried to drive away down the wrong side of the road but they shot at me and hit me in the arm.”

There was screaming and blood all around as Iraqi police and soldiers tried to return fire on the Blackwater guards who had started the shooting.

“The shooting may have continued for 15 minutes,” Abdul-Kahad said. “It’s hard to be sure. I was crouched and bleeding in my car for an hour until Iraqi guards came to rescue me. I still haven’t recovered from what I went through.”

An Iraqi police officer who cleared a path for the first Blackwater crew to enter the square said the shooting had been unprovoked.

“The man in the third car fired three or four shots randomly,” the police officer, Salman, told his American lawyers who provided a videotape of his account to the public broadcaster NPR. He said the first shooter was “big, had a moustache and was white.”

Salman saw the car in front of Abdul Kahad catch fire. “Boom, boom, boom,” he said. “The car had started moving very slowly by itself because it was an automatic car. It was moving toward the square, and at this moment they started shooting the car with big machine guns. And then the car exploded.”

When the scene was cleared, 17 people were dead. Apart from two Iraqi security officers, all were civilians.

The shooting became a flashpoint for a city that had become as fatigued by the excesses of foreign companies as it had by the year’s incessant violence. Resentment boiled over at security company convoys that operated with impunity throughout the lawless streets.

After the shooting, Iraqis took to the airwaves in large numbers to complain about security companies, which they saw as a foreboding presence and, in some ways, a throwback to the Saddam days when the state-sanctioned gun-slingers could shoot at will.

As the violence grew throughout 2004-5, security details rarely hesitated before firing a burst from a machine gun at any car that even inadvertently strayed close. They operated outside the law. But even worse was a strong feeling that the companies operated without respect for Iraqi citizens.

For almost seven years, Iraqis had slammed their brakes at the hulking armoured convoys of security firms that terrified civilians. The most infamous name was Blackwater.

Soon after the fall of Baghdad, security companies arrived in droves seeking the lucrative contracts that were soon to flow in helping raise a state from the post-Saddam ruins.

Blackwater won the lead contract to defend key US government institutions, including the Baghdad Embassy. Its numbers grew rapidly, drawing largely on ex-US military special operations units. At $600 per day, it was fast, if not always easy, money for ex-soldiers used to one third of the salary, worse conditions and often higher risk.

A resentment quickly grew in the highly competitive, macho private security scene that Blackwater operatives were the proletarian guard, the rest were foot soldiers. Blackwater was soon the biggest private army in Iraq and could have laid a claim on being the biggest and most powerful private force anywhere in the world.

“They came and they went, as they should have,” said Rihab Abdul Karim, whose nephew was killed in Nissour Square. “They were arrogant with the power they had. They thought they answered to no-one. And with this verdict, maybe they were right.”

UPI | Jan 1, 2010

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 (UPI) — The Transportation Security Administration nominee misled U.S. senators about improperly accessing confidential records years ago, documents indicate.

The documents obtained by The Washington Post said TSA nominee Erroll Southers indicated he accepted responsibility for a “grave error in judgment” 20 years ago when he accessed confidential criminal records about his then-estranged wife’s boyfriend, the newspaper reported Friday.

The revelation comes as congressional Democrats press for a quick confirmation of Southers, whose nomination has been blocked by Republicans. Since a failed airline bombing on Christmas, lawmakers have been pressured to put in a permanent chief at TSA, a key agency in enforcing airline security.

The Senate homeland security committee approved Southers’ nomination Nov. 19. The next day, the former FBI agent wrote to committee chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman, Ind-Conn., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the ranking Republican, saying his account during committee hearings about the incident were incorrect. Southers said in the letter he recalled that he conducted two database searches himself, downloaded confidential law enforcement records about his wife’s boyfriend and passed information on to a police department employee, the Post said.

Accessing such information without proper cause is a violation of the federal Privacy Act.

A spokeswoman for Lieberman said in a statement the senator “believes that Erroll Southers is an outstanding candidate to lead the TSA. Twenty-two years ago, Mr. Southers committed a serious error in judgment. He admitted that error and was disciplined for it.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would work to maneuver around the GOP block to force consideration of the Southers nomination when the Senate returns to Washington later this month.

The report into the deaths has provoked demonstrations. (/Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

London Times | Dec 31, 2009

by Jerome Starkey In Kabul

American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead.

Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed.

Western military sources said that the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have claimed the lives of countless soldiers and civilians.

“This was a joint operation that was conducted against an IED cell that Afghan and US officials had been developing information against for some time,” said a senior Nato insider. But he admitted that “the facts about what actually went down are in dispute”.

The allegations of civilian casualties led to protests in Kabul and Jalalabad, with children as young as 10 chanting “Death to America” and demanding that foreign forces should leave Afghanistan at once.

President Karzai sent a team of investigators to Narang district, in eastern Kunar province, after reports of a massacre first surfaced on Monday.

“The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said.

Assadullah Wafa, who led the investigation, said that US soldiers flew to Kunar from Kabul, suggesting that they were part of a special forces unit.

“At around 1 am, three nights ago, some American troops with helicopters left Kabul and landed around 2km away from the village,” he told The Times. “The troops walked from the helicopters to the houses and, according to my investigation, they gathered all the students from two rooms, into one room, and opened fire.” Mr Wafa, a former governor of Helmand province, met President Karzai to discuss his findings yesterday. “I spoke to the local headmaster,” he said. “It’s impossible they were al-Qaeda. They were children, they were civilians, they were innocent. I condemn this attack.”

In a telephone interview last night, the headmaster said that the victims were asleep in three rooms when the troops arrived. “Seven students were in one room,” said Rahman Jan Ehsas. “A student and one guest were in another room, a guest room, and a farmer was asleep with his wife in a third building.

“First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq [the farmer] heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That’s why his wife wasn’t killed.”

A local elder, Jan Mohammed, said that three boys were killed in one room and five were handcuffed before they were shot. “I saw their school books covered in blood,” he said.

The investigation found that eight of the victims were aged from 11 to 17. The guest was a shepherd boy, 12, called Samar Gul, the headmaster said. He said that six of the students were at high school and two were at primary school. He said that all the students were his nephews. In Jalalabad, protesters set alight a US flag and an effigy of President Obama after chanting “Death to Obama” and “Death to foreign forces”. In Kabul, protesters held up banners showing photographs of dead children alongside placards demanding “Foreign troops leave Afghanistan” and “Stop killing us”.

Hekmatullah, 10, a protester, said: “We’re sick of Americans bombing us.” Samiullah Miakhel, 60, a protester. said: “The Americans are just all the time killing civilians.”

Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said that there was “no direct evidence to substantiate” Mr Wafa’s claims that unarmed civilians were harmed in what it described as a “joint coalition and Afghan security force” operation.

“As the joint assault force entered the village they came under fire from several buildings and in returning fire killed nine individuals,” he said.

• Eight Americans were killed in an attack in eastern Afghanistan yesterday (Jerome Starkey writes). Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said that the dead were not uniformed soldiers. Afghan sources said that they were civilians killed in a suicide attack on a compound in Khost province. The US Embassy in Kabul said: “Eight Americans have been killed in an attack on RC-East,” referring to the military region of eastern Afghanistan that includes 14 provinces.

CNN | Dec 31, 2009

A woman passes a burnt-out car in the aftermath of the 2007 shootout in Baghdad, Iraq.

Washington (CNN) — A federal judge dismissed manslaughter charges Thursday against five Blackwater security guards in the 2007 deaths of Iraqi civilians in a Baghad square, finding that prosecutors wrongly used the men’s own statements against them.

The September 2007 shootout in Baghdad’s Nusoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and two dozen wounded. The killings led Iraq’s government to slap limits on security contractors hired by Blackwater, now known as Xe, and other firms.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina found that the government’s case was built largely on “statements compelled under a threat of job loss in a subsequent criminal prosecution,” a violation of the Fifth Amendment rights of the five men charged.

“In their zeal to bring charges against the defendant in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation,” Urbina wrote in a 90-page decision.

Federal prosecutors “repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors assigned to the case” in doing so, he found.

Urbina also sharply criticized prosecutors and federal agents who developed the case, calling their explanations for using the guards’ statements “all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.”

“In short, the government has utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants’ statements or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt,” he wrote.

There was no immediate response to the decision from the Justice Department, which can appeal Thursday’s ruling or seek new indictments against the men.

The men were guarding a State Department convoy moving through western Baghdad when the shooting began. The company said its contractors came under attack, but Iraqi authorities called the gunfire unprovoked and indiscriminate.

Each of the now-former guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, Donald Ball and Nicholas Slatten — faced 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and one count of using a firearm in the commission of a violent crime.

Prosecutors requested that charges against Slatten be dropped in November, but Thursday’s ruling dismisses the counts against all five.

“We’re obviously pleased at the decision dismissing the entire indictment and are very happy that these courageous young men can begin the new year without this unfair cloud hanging over them,” said Slough’s lawyer, Mark Hulkower.

A sixth guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty in 2008 to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.

A view of an Italian ski resort in the Alps Photo: ALAMY

EU ski holiday paid for by taxpayers

Taxpayers will heavily subsidise a skiing holiday in the Italian Alps for the children of MEPs and European Parliament officials in February.

Telegraph | Dec 31, 2009

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels

European Union officials, including MEPs, are already under fire for threatening legal action unless they are paid a recession busting 3.7 pre cent pay rise in January.

Most also pay reduced “community” rates of taxation and the latest perk will fuel controversy over the subsidised lifestyle enjoyed by many EU civil servants.

The eight-day skiing trip for 80 children aged between eight and 17 is timed to begin over the weekend of St Valentine’s Day, providing some romantic time off from parenting for officials.

Costs, the holiday is priced at 920 euros (£822), are generously subsidised by the parliament’s budget. Households receive different levels of subsidy depending on their monthly income but even those on a income of over £108,000 get a discount.

There is reduction of up to 52 per cent for officials earning £69,620 a year and an MEP, earning £86,000, is eligible for a subsidy of 45 per cent.

According to an internal document an extra 10 per cent reduction “applies to the enrolment of a second child and subsequent children”.

Mats Persson, of the think-tank Open Europe, said: “It is ridiculous that, at a time when most families across Europe have to tighten their belts, the European Parliament thinks it is appropriate to subsidise holidays for the families of even its most well-paid staff. How can MEPs claim subsidised holidays for their children when many of their constituents’ families are struggling through the recession?”

Organised by the parliament’s staff committee, the holiday, with the educational aim of teaching children skiing skills, will be spent in Italian province of Bergamo.

The children will enjoy full board in a three-star hotel in the beautiful village of Spiazzi.

The trip includes “workshops” in a “multilingual environment” on the themes of “the mountain, its snow, its nature”. Four hours each day will be spent on the ski slopes and three hours on lessons, such as an “exercice (sic) with snow dogs” as well as “open air games” and a “torchlight procession”.

The parliament’s spokesman declined to comment on the holiday.

Nigel Farage, leader of Ukip in the European Parliament, said “spending a fortune on a skiing jolly for MEPs and their families” would anger the public after the worst economic year in memory.

“Surely now is a time of reflection and humility, not a chance to rub the taxpayer’s nose in yet another tremendous waste of money,” he said.

nationalpost.com | Dec 23, 2009

by Lawrence Solomon

Since my Saturday column described how Wikipedia editors have been feverishly rewriting climate history over much of the decade, fair-minded Wikipedians have been doing their best to correct the record. No sooner than they remove gross distortions, however, than the distortions are replaced. William Connolley, a Climategate member and Wikipedia’s chief climate change propagandist, remains as active as ever.

How does Wikipedia work and how does Connolley and his co-conspirators exercise control? Take Wikipedia’s page for Medieval Warm Period, as an example. In the three days following my column’s appearance, this page alone was changed some 50 times in battles between Connolley’s crew and those who want a fair presentation of history.

One of the battles concerns the so-called hockey stick graphs, which purport to show that temperatures over the last 2000 years were fairly stable until the last century, when temperatures rose rapidly to today’s supposedly dangerous and unprecedented levels.  In these graphs, the Medieval Warm Period – a period of several centuries around the year 1000 – appears to be a modest bump along the way. Before the hockey stick graphs began to be published about a decade ago, scientists everywhere – including those associated with the UN itself – viewed the Medieval Warm Period as much hotter than today. Rather than appearing as a modest bump compared to today’s high temperatures, the Medieval Warm Period looked more like a mountain next to the molehill that is today’s temperature increase.

The hockey stick graphs led to an upheaval in scientific understanding when the UN reversed itself and declared them bona fide. Soon after, the hockey stick graphs were shown to be bogus by a blue-chip panel of experts assembled by the US Congress. The Climategate Emails confirm the blue-chip panel’s assessment – we now know that Climategate scientists themselves doubted the reliability of the hockey stick graphs.

With the hockey stick graphs so thoroughly discredited, you’d think they would become a footnote to a discussion of the Medieval Warm Period, or an object of amusement and curiosity. But no, on the Wikipedia page for the Medieval Warm Period, the hockey stick graph appears prominently at the top, as if it is settled science.

Because the hockey stick graph has become an icon of deceit and in no way an authority worthy of being cited, fair-minded Wikipedians tried to remove the graph from the page, as can be seen here. Exactly two minutes later, one of Connelley’s associates replaced the graph, restoring the page to Connelley’s original version, as seen here.

Battles like this occurred on numerous fronts, until just after midnight on Dec 22, when Connolley reimposed his version of events and, for good measure, froze the page to prevent others from making changes — and to prevent the public, even in two-minute windows, from realizing that today’s temperatures look modest in comparison to those in the past. In the World of Wikipedia, seen as here, the hockey stick graph, and Connolley’s version of history, still rules.

A German Bundeswehr army soldier of the Bravo platoon, 4th company, 391 mechanised infantry battalion of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stands next to Afghans during a bridge reconstruction operation in Chahar Dara in the outskirts of Kunduz December 14, 2009. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Reuters | Dec 16, 2009

by Golnar Motevalli

KABUL (Reuters) – The victims of a German-ordered NATO raid in northern Afghanistan that killed scores of civilians must be compensated for the rest of their lives by the German government, their lawyer said on Wednesday.

On September 4, a U.S. fighter jet called in by German troops struck two fuel trucks that NATO said at the time had been hijacked by Taliban insurgents.

Germany’s defense minister at the time has since stepped down because of the incident, which the Afghan government said killed 99 people including 30 civilians. Independent rights groups estimate between 60 and 70 civilians were killed.

Karim Popal, an Afghan-born German lawyer from Bremen who has taken on the case of 165 Afghans in Kunduz and who lost relatives in the airstrike, said what they needed was not money, but a guarantee from the German government that it would build the homes, schools and clinics they need to continue their lives.

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“In Kunduz, a large number of young people have lost fathers and whole families. There are a large number of widows now. It is the responsibility of the German government to help them,” Popal told Reuters.

German courts, according to Popal, are prepared to work with him and his team in order to avoid the case going to trial, but the government’s latest offer of compensation was inadequate.

“They suggested 3 million euros ($4.36 million), but we have not accepted this because this is not just a matter of money, but about the livelihoods of these people and the rest of their lives.”

Popal said a team of six lawyers, including two women, went to Kunduz for a month and a half after the air strike to carry out research, interview residents and victims and gather information about those who lost relatives.

“We have come to the conclusion, after the work that we did, that 137 were killed who were not Taliban,” Popal said. According to his findings, 56 children were among those killed and the number of Taliban insurgents killed could have been as few as five or six.

“But even if they killed 10 Taliban or more, that does not justify killing 137 people.”

Popal said he was looking into similar cases in Afghanistan where civilians had been killed in NATO-led air strikes but would not disclose which incidents he was looking to work on.

The air strike sparked outrage in Afghanistan and was publicly condemned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and turned many Germans against the war.

In Berlin a parliamentary investigation into the raid will begin to shed light on what Merkel’s government knew about the killings and whether it deliberately suppressed details of the attack before she had to face a federal election on September 27.

Popal said he wanted Germany to take an active role in developing the district of Char Dara, where the air strike took place, by building schools, clinics and houses and helping women who were widowed to live independent lives so that they could look after their families properly.

“For these women houses must be built. She has to be able to live the life of the man that has been killed, to be able to make a living,” Popal said.