BAGHDAD — An official Iraqi investigation into a deadly shooting involving Blackwater USA security guards raised the number of Iraqis killed to 17 and found the gunfire was unwarranted, the government said Sunday. It also said the shootings amounted to a deliberate crime and recommended those involved face trial.
The Blackwater guards are accused of opening fire on Iraqi civilians in a main square in Baghdad on Sept. 16. They claimed they came under fire first.
The Iraqi investigative committee, which was ordered by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, found that convoys from the Moyock, N.C.-based security company did not come under direct or indirect fire before the men shot up the intersection.
“It was not hit even by a stone,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.
The incident has outraged Iraqis and brought calls for the rules governing those protecting American diplomats to be overhauled.
The three-member Iraqi panel led by Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi raised the casualty toll to 17 Iraqis killed and 23 wounded, as opposed to the 11 deaths Iraqi officials originally reported.
It determined that Blackwater guards sprayed western Baghdad’s Nisoor Square with gunfire without provocation.
Al-Dabbagh said the Cabinet would weigh the Iraqi findings with those of a joint U.S.-Iraqi commission “and subsequently adopt the legal procedures to hold this company accountable.”
The Iraqi panel is one of at least three investigations involving Americans. The joint U.S.-Iraqi commission met for the first time Sunday to review American security operations after the shooting.
The FBI has also dispatched a team to Baghdad, and retired veteran diplomat Stapleton Roy is leading a diplomatic review, along with a former State Department and intelligence official, Eric Boswell.
The Sept. 16 incident was one of at least six involving deaths allegedly caused by Blackwater that Iraqi authorities here have brought to the attention of the Americans.
Across the Iraqi capital, bombings killed at least nine Iraqis in three separate attacks, including one near Iran’s embassy, police said.
Separately, the U.S. military said a pre-dawn raid Saturday in Baghdad’s Sadr City netted three men believed responsible for the May 29 abduction of five Britons — four security guards and a computer expert. In the kidnapping, some 40 armed men in police uniforms swept into the Iraqi Finance Ministry and took the Britons toward Sadr City.
As recently as last month, the U.S. military has said it believes the Britons are still alive.
Five crossing points in Kurdish-run northern Iraq — closed last month by Iran to protest the U.S. detention of an Iranian — remained closed although Iranian reports said the border points would be opened Sunday.
Hundreds of cargo trucks had lined up on the Iraqi side of the Bashmagh border crossing in hopes of resuming their trade, but most of the drivers gave up by early afternoon.
Many left their trucks behind in hopes the border would open today.
The U.S. military said an Iranian taken into custody Sept. 20 was a member of the Quds Force, a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards alleged to smuggle weapons to Shiite extremists. The Iraqi government has asked the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to release the man, saying he was in the country on official business.
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