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Iraq acts to end immunity law
30/10/2007 23:06 - (SA)
Baghdad - Iraq's cabinet approved a draft law on Tuesday that would end the immunity from prosecution of foreign security contractors by scrapping a decree that Iraqis have complained amounts to a "licence to kill".
The bill, which still has to be approved by parliament, follows a September 16 shooting incident involving Blackwater in which 17 Iraqis were killed.
The US firm said its guards acted lawfully, but the shooting enraged the Iraqi government.
"The Cabinet has approved a law that will put non-Iraqi firms and those they employ under Iraqi law," government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh said after a cabinet meeting.
Iraq said there were more than 180 mainly US and European security companies in Iraq, with estimates of the number of private contractors ranging from 25 000 to 48 000.
Dabbagh said the bill proposed cancelling Order 17, a controversial decree issued by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in 2004 shortly before it handed over control to an interim Iraqi government.
Security firms must register
A long-running a source of friction between Washington and Baghdad, the measure prevents foreign contractors from being prosecuted in local courts.
Iraqi efforts to revoke it had gone nowhere until the Blackwater shooting.
The new bill also proposes tightening controls on foreign security firms by making them register and apply for a licence to work in Iraq, and for all guards to have weapons permits. That process has begun but has been mired in bureaucracy.
Contractors who enter Iraq with a US Department of Defence identity card would have to apply for an entry visa in future.
A potential source of friction was a proposal to make foreign security guards, and the convoys they were protecting, subject to searches at Iraqi security force checkpoints.
That could cause problems for high-profile convoys, several security sources in Baghdad said, as they need to keep on the move to minimise the risk of attack. At present, many convoys do not stop at Iraqi checkpoints.
Abiding by the law
"They (Iraqi police and soldiers) will see this as a chance to bring Blackwater and other high-profile security teams down a peg," said one security contractor, who declined to be named.
Lawrence Peter, director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, said his members were "doing their best to abide by the law".
The US military, already stretched thin in its fight against Sunni and Shi'ite militants, is heavily dependent on them to protect convoys, buildings and other infrastructure.
- Reuters
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