Iraq Details Blackwater Shooting Incident

Blackwater had better hope there’s an Iraqi Abraham Zapruder out there. The Interior Ministry has pieced together an account of Sunday’s shooting in Mansour alleging that the private-security company fired on civilians at a traffic circle in Nisour Squar with practically no provocation.

In the Interior Ministry account — made available to The New York Times on Thursday — Iraqi investigators interviewed many witnesses but relied on the testimony of the people they considered to be the four most credible.

The account says that as soon as the guards took positions in four locations in the square, they began shooting south, killing a driver who had failed to heed a traffic policeman’s call to stop.

“The Blackwater company is considered 100 percent guilty through this investigation,” the report concludes.

An internal U.S. forensic analysis is still ongoing, and an announced joint U.S.-Iraqi investigation has yet to get underway. But the Interior Ministry is already using the report as a lever for getting the State Department to cancel Blackwater’s contract to protect U.S. diplomats — a move State is refusing. The Iraqis also want U.S. security companies to be subject to Iraqi criminal liability.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ministry’s account of the day portrays Blackwater contractors as a band of murderous rogues, who shot without provocation and then just kept shooting:

In the Interior Ministry’s version of that day, the events began unfolding when a bomb exploded shortly before noon near the unfinished Rahman Mosque, about a mile north of Nisour Square. Embassy officials have said the convoy was responding to the bomb, but it is still unclear whether it was carrying officials away from the bomb scene, driving toward it to pick someone up or simply providing support.

Whatever their mission, and whoever was inside, the convoy of at least four sport utility vehicles steered onto the square just after noon and took positions that blocked the flow of midday traffic in three directions. But one family’s car, approaching from the south along Yarmouk Street, apparently did not stop quickly enough, and the Blackwater guards opened fire, killing the man who was driving, the ministry account says.

“The woman next to the driver had a baby in her arms,” said an official who shared the report, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share it. “She started to scream. They shot her,” the official said, adding that the guards then fired what appeared to be grenades or pump guns into the car as it continued to move. The car caught fire.

“The car kept rolling, so they burned it,” the official said.