Iraq bars U.S. security firm Blackwater

Iraq said on Thursday it was banning controversial U.S. security outfit Blackwater from operating in the country over a 2007 Baghdad shooting involving its guards in which 17 civilians were killed.

The decision to scrap the license for the firm at the forefront of a booming private security business in Iraq came just two days before the country goes to the polls for the first time since 2005.

"The contract is finished and will be not be renewed by order of the minister of the interior," interior ministry spokesman Major General Abdel Karim Khalaf said, without giving a specific date.

Blackwater Worldwide, a multi-million dollar U.S. State Department contractor in Iraq, is being expelled over the deaths of civilians at Nisur Square, a busy Baghdad intersection, on Sept 16, 2007, Khalaf said.

"It is because of the shooting incident in 2007," he said. "They came to us and applied and we refused them. They tried by all means to stay here and we said, 'no.'"

An Iraqi investigation found that 17 civilians were killed and 20 wounded when Blackwater guards opened fire with automatic weapons while escorting an American diplomatic convoy through Baghdad. U.S. prosecutors say 14 civilians were killed.

The firm and its wealthy founder Erik Prince maintain its guards were responding to fire and acting in self-defense, but residents such as Afrah Abbas, 20, whose mother was killed, adamantly rejected such claims on Thursday.

"They are criminals, and we don't want criminals in our country," Abbas said. "I feel better now. This is the revenge that I and all of the families of the victims wanted," she said.

Five former Blackwater guards pleaded not guilty on Jan 6 in a Washington court over the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others by gunfire and grenades. Their trial is expected to begin on Jan 29, 2010.

Indignant Iraqi residents and critics have repeatedly accused Blackwater of having a cowboy mentality and a shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach when carrying out security duties.

Headquartered in North Carolina, Blackwater is one of the biggest security firms operating in war-torn Iraq with about 1,000 staff, and since the 2003 invasion has been employed to protect U.S. government personnel.

A U.S. embassy official confirmed the mission had received an official notification of the decision but could not say when Blackwater would leave or what action would be taken to find a replacement.

"We don't have specifics about dates. We are working with the government of Iraq and our contractors to address the implications of this decision," the official said.

Blackwater said it was not aware its contract was being terminated.

"Blackwater has always said that we will continue the important work of protecting U.S. government officials in Iraq for as long as our customer asks us to do so, and in accordance with Iraqi law that has not changed," it said in a statement.

"We have received no official communications from the government of Iraq or our customer on the status of those applications or the future of our work in Iraq."

After the 2007 incident, the Iraqi government pressed the State Department to withdraw Blackwater from the country, but the security firm's contract was renewed in April 2008.

Foreign security teams in Iraq have long operated in a legal gray area, but under a military accord signed with Washington in November, Iraq obtained a key concession to lift the immunity to prosecution previously extended to US security contractors.

Blackwater first came under the spotlight on March 31, 2004, when four of their employees were killed by an angry mob in Fallujah, then a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold. The crowd mutilated their bodies and hung them from a bridge.

The shocking images were broadcast worldwide and helped trigger a month-long U.S. assault on Fallujah that left 36 U.S. soldiers, 200 insurgents and 600 Iraqi civilians dead.

© Wire reports