[NYTr] Blackwater opened fire unprovoked from the ground and the sky

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Newsweek - Sep 30, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21064094/site/newsweek/

Blackwater: The Confidential Iraqi Incident Report

An extensive evidence file assembled by the Iraqi National Police after
the controversial Blackwater shooting suggests that the private
contractors opened fire unprovoked from the ground and the sky.

By Kevin Peraino

Sept. 30, 2007 - Since the fatal Sept. 16 Blackwater USA shooting in
Baghdad’s Nasoor Square, officials from the private security company
have insisted that their guards were responding to fire from “armed
enemies.” Yet an extensive evidence file put together by the Iraqi
National Police and obtained by NEWSWEEK—including documents, maps,
sworn witness statements and police video footage—appears to contradict
the contractors’ version of events. A confidential incident report,
which has been provided by Iraqi National Police investigators to
American military and civilian officials, concludes that the Blackwater
vehicles “opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason.”

A nine-minute police video made in the moments after the shooting shows
helicopters similar to those used by Blackwater still hovering over the
wreckage of charred, smoking and bullet-pocked cars. (For an edited
clip of the video, click here.) The graphic images include footage of
burned human remains and show the street littered with brass bullet
casings. They also show what appears to be a police officer waving a
pistol at the scene; the footage was captured by a different police
officer, who had run over from the nearby Iraqi National Police
headquarters. (Portions of the video have been previously broadcast; it
was recorded without sound.)

Iraqi National Police investigators also believe that Blackwater's
helicopters fired on the cars from above, according to confidential
police documents and interviews with senior police officials. A memo
written on Sept. 17 by the lead Iraqi police investigator states that
shortly after the shooting began, “helicopters opened fire from the air
toward the cars and civilians.” Gen. Hussein al-Awadi, the commander of
the Iraqi National Police, told NEWSWEEK that the trajectory of some of
the bullet wounds could only have been caused by fire from the air. “If
anyone moved—whenever they saw someone leaving—either the convoy or the
chopper shot him,” says Ali Kalaf Salman, an undercover Iraqi National
Police officer who was working as a traffic cop at the scene. (One of
the police documents lists 17 fatalities and many more wounded from the
shooting. Other accounts have put the death toll at 11.)

Blackwater officials have acknowledged that their helicopters were at
the scene of the shooting, but have denied that the guards in the
choppers opened fire. In statements from Blackwater guards provided to
the U.S. State Department and obtained by ABC News, the guards say they
were fired upon by uniformed Iraqi police officers and others dressed
in civilian clothes from multiple locations near the traffic circle.
Still images provided to the network show a Blackwater vehicle pocked
with five bullet marks. Anne Tyrrell, a company spokesperson, said
shortly after the incident that the company “acted lawfully and
appropriately in response to a hostile attack in Baghdad … The
‘civilians’ reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in
fact armed enemies and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire.”

Yet Iraqi policemen and other Iraqi witnesses told NEWSWEEK that the
Blackwater contractors opened fire unprovoked. “No one shot at
Blackwater,” says Col. Faris Saadi Abdul, the lead Iraqi police
investigator. “Blackwater shot without any cause.” Al-Awadi, the
National Police commander, says that minutes after he heard the
shooting begin, he rushed to the scene, which is just around the corner
from the National Police headquarters. (He says he was accompanied by a
unit of American military trainers embedded with his police.) “We were
trying to figure out why they were shooting,” he told a NEWSWEEK
reporter at the National Police headquarters in Baghdad over the
weekend. “We tried to find a reason and we couldn't.” He says that his
men searched the civilian cars at the scene, but didn't find any
weapons. When Iraqi investigators later stopped a different Blackwater
convoy near the scene of the shooting, the general says that the
Blackwater guards refused to comment about the incident.

At the Iraqi National Police headquarters in Baghdad on Saturday,
witnesses to the shooting milled around the halls, waiting to provide
investigators with additional statements about the incident. Sirhan
Diab, a traffic policeman who was working in Nasoor Square at the time
of the shooting, said that he’d told his story to at least four
separate investigators, including American military and civilian
officials. (He says that as far as he knows, nobody from Blackwater has
contacted him directly.)

The traffic cop, dressed in a crisp white shirt with blue epaulets,
told NEWSWEEK that he had been alerted by radio to the arrival of the
Blackwater convoy shortly before the vehicles approached Nasoor Square,
just after noon on Sept. 16. About 30 minutes before, Diab says, he’d
heard an explosion in the distance that sounded like a car bomb, but
says that it didn’t worry him because “it was far away.” (In the
statements obtained by ABC, the Blackwater guards said that a car bomb
exploded near the site of a meeting of the official that they were
protecting, prompting them to evacuate.)

Diab says that he stopped oncoming traffic to allow the Blackwater
vehicles to pass. As the convoy pulled into the circle, according to
Diab, the Blackwater guards began throwing bottles of water from their
vehicles—a signal to stay back. Yet shortly after the convoy slowed to
a stop in the circle, he says, the Blackwater guards “started shooting
randomly.” One of the bullets hit the driver of a white Kia that had
stopped near the roundabout. (Blackwater guards have said they felt
threatened because they believed the car was continuing to move toward
them.) Diab says that he and another policeman, Ali Kalaf Salman,
rushed to the car and tried to pull open the doors. As they did, the
Blackwater guards intensified their fire.

The Blackwater men said in their written statements that they believed
a policeman was “pushing” one of the vehicles—which the guards
suspected to be a car bomb—toward the circle, which prompted them to
fire. When asked whether he was pushing the Kia, Salman, the undercover
police office, laughs. “When you see someone get shot, you try to help
them,” he says. Salman says he was carrying a 9mm Glock, but kept it
holstered throughout the shooting. ABC reported that Blackwater guards
also said they saw one person pull out what appeared to be a trigger
device for a bomb. But the Iraqi policemen suggest that perhaps the
edgy Blackwater guards mistook everyday items for lethal weapons. “I
pulled my radio out to call an ambulance, and they shot at me,” says
Diab.

When the traffic police arrived at the white Kia, a woman in the car
“was crying and holding her son,” says Salman. As the shooting
intensified, the two policemen said they were forced to flee on foot
across the square. They say they looked on as the guards fired at the
Kia from all directions. “Whenever they saw movement inside the
vehicle, they started shooting,” says Salman. Eventually, the men said,
the Blackwater guards launched larger projectiles—perhaps rifle-fired
grenades—at the white Kia, setting it on fire. The video obtained by
NEWSWEEK shows a large-caliber shell casing at the scene.

The convoy then continued around the traffic circle, according to a
confidential Iraqi police diagram obtained by NEWSWEEK and provided to
American investigators. According to the accompanying incident report,
the Blackwater guards opened fire on an Iraqi Army checkpoint on a
nearby road leading away from the square. The convoy also apparently
sideswiped at least one Iraqi civilian vehicle in the circle. Samir
Hobi, 40, says he got out of his car and complained to the Blackwater
guards about the damage. He says one of the guards shouted back: “Shut
up or I’ll shoot you.”

Iraqi officials have long chafed at what they perceive to be arrogance
on the part of American contractors, and the fact that they are not
technically subject to any local laws. In the immediate aftermath of
the Nasoor Square incident they tried to ban Blackwater from Iraq
(though they later relented and agreed to a joint U.S.-Iraqi
investigation of the incident). Iraqi officials have maintained from
the beginning that the incident was unprovoked. The Iraqi National
Police force is itself controversial. A recent report by retired Marine
general James Jones concluded that the force was infiltrated by
sectarian loyalists and should be disbanded.

At times, the official National Police version of events seems to be
tinged with hyperbole. Al-Awadi, the National Police commander, told
NEWSWEEK that there were “hundreds—hundreds—of American vehicles” on
the scene shortly after the incident. That is almost certainly an
exaggeration. Still, the Iraqi police accounts also roughly jibe with
the stories of civilian eyewitnesses interviewed by NEWSWEEK shortly
after the shooting. Iraqi officials have hinted that additional
videotapes of the incident may exist that have yet to be made public.
Ultimately, it may take further sifting of the hard evidence before
investigators can determine what really happened at Nasoor Square.

With Larry Kaplow in Baghdad