Grieving Iraqis want honor first, not money

"Let them apologize by saying those were innocent people," Rubaie said. "Then we will be ready for understanding."

Rubaie couldn't believe that with the investigation still going on, the State Department would renew the Blackwater contract.

"Such decisions abuse us," he said. "I appeal to the American ambassador: Just as he considers the safety of the American diplomats, he must also consider the safety of the Iraqi citizen in an equal way."

Abdul-Razzaq remembered rushing his son to a hospital, and being told an hour later that he was dead. At a police station two days later, U.S. investigators apologized while emphasizing that Blackwater personnel worked for a private company, not the U.S. military, he said.

"I told them that if they didn't fall under [the military's] protection, I would have killed them with my teeth right here on the street," he said.

They pulled out an aerial map of Nisoor Square.

Days went by. Nothing happened. A day before the Oct. 12 Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Abdul-Razzaq got a call from an Iraqi official asking him to meet with FBI investigators. He resisted. He was planning to visit his son's grave.

But the official pressed him: The FBI had come all the way from the U.S. and would be there only a few days. Abdul-Razzaq relented.

They wanted distances and positions. They asked about his height, weight, skin and eye color, his job, his customers, his employees and number of children. They asked about exit wounds, how his son was injured. The rage welled up.

"It was a massacre," Abdul-Razzaq said of the incident. "It is as if they came with the sole intent of eradicating all -- women and children, they had to die."

The investigators requested his car to examine bullet fragments. He towed it to an entrance of the Green Zone, the U.S.-protected administrative headquarters of Baghdad, and invited a CNN team to film the transfer.

A few weeks later, he was summoned to another meeting at the U.S. Embassy with Butenis. He said she asked whether he wanted to press charges or receive compensation, how much he wanted and what terms he demanded for a settlement.

"I told them I didn't expect to be compensated a large sum," he recalled. "No amount of money would return my son. I told them I would feel better only if I knew the people responsible for this crime are brought to trial."

Two months ago, an intermediary on behalf of Blackwater again offered him money as a goodwill gesture, he said. Again he refused.

Two days later, he said, he met with a Blackwater representative. The man offered him $20,000, Abdul-Razzaq said, "not as compensation, but as a gift." Abdul-Razzaq said he refused again.

"If you write out an apology for me and confess your crime," he recalled saying, "I will give you a similar paper with my signature promising not to press charges."

He said the official told him such an arrangement was impossible. His company's lawyers in America would never sign off on such a proposal.

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daragahi@latimes.com