BAGHDAD — The young biology student pulled his car to the side of the busy traffic circle when he saw a fast-moving line of SUVs approaching from behind. As they flew past, he recalls, the lead vehicle appeared to intentionally smash into his sedan. But the worst was yet to come.
As the convoy sped off, a gunner inside the last sport utility vehicle sprayed the traffic circle with bullets. Pedestrians ran for cover. Seated in the car closest to the SUV, student Ali Karem Fakhri Hilal thrust his hands into the air to show he was unarmed.
But four cars behind him, Hussein Salih Mohammed Rabee, a retired businessman active in a local peace committee, was fatally wounded.
Nearly two months after the Aug. 13 shooting in Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, nobody has been held accountable for Rabee's death. His sons say the provincial police commander and a U.S. Army officer told them that Blackwater USA, the same company accused of killing as many as 17 Iraqis at a Baghdad traffic circle Sept. 16, was responsible. Hillah residents held a protest outside the office of an American nongovernmental agency known to use Blackwater guards, waving banners and demanding Blackwater be brought to justice.
But like most Iraqis affected by shootings involving private security firms, Rabee's relatives have hit the shield that protects the companies. It is almost impossible for Iraqis to prove who did the shooting; even if they can, the security firms claim immunity from prosecution.
The Rabee family's story shows the futility of trying to press charges against foreign companies, which have been accused of causing scores of deaths and injuries in Iraq. They operate with virtual impunity as they tear through crowded city streets. The unmarked convoys push slow-moving vehicles out of their way, fire at anyone who is perceived as a threat, and make it clear their priority is to protect their high-profile wards.
Blackwater, which guards State Department officials, the U.S. ambassador and others, has a perfect record in that regard. It has not lost a client in Iraq.
"This company killed my father and left him on the street," said one of Rabee's sons, Bahaa Hussein Salih Rabee, the head of the physics department at Babil University in Hillah.
He and another brother, Safa, a businessman living in Britain, say that they met with the provincial police commander, Brig. Gen. Qais Hamza Mamouri, and U.S. Army Lt. Col. Thomas Roth days after Rabee's death. Both expressed their condolences, but explained there was nothing they could do because of Blackwater's immunity.
