'L.A. Times': Widow of Iraqi Killed by Blackwater Guard Still Awaits Compensation

By: E&P Staff The widow of the Iraqi vice presidential guard shot to death on Christmas Eve by an allegedly drunken Blackwater USA employee said this weekend she has not yet received any compensation, Tina Susman and Raheem Salman report in the Los Angeles Times today.

The entire article appears at www.latimes.com. An excerpt appears below.
*

Umm Sajjad said the office of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, for whom her husband was working when he died, was handling the case and told her that they had rejected the proposed sum as too low. State Department documents say that Blackwater and the U.S. State Department had agreed that $15,000 was a fair amount.

An official in Mehdi's office said the vice president was seeking $100,000 for the family. The official said $20,000 had been sent but that it had not been given to the guard's family because the office felt it was too little. The official requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the sensitive topic.

There was no immediate response to an e-mailed request for information sent early today to Blackwater's spokeswoman, Anne Tyrrell.

The slaying of Sajjad's husband, Raheem Khalif Hulaichi, by an allegedly drunk Blackwater employee has been cited by critics of the company and the State Department as an example of how Blackwater was allowed to operate with virtual impunity in Iraq. Details of the case came to light last week as congressional hearings were held into Blackwater, whose guards are accused of killing at least 11 Iraqis on Sept. 16 at a crowded Baghdad intersection.

Blackwater says its guards fired in self-defense after being ambushed. Iraqi witnesses say they fired without provocation.

The congressional hearings delved into the case of Hulaichi, who was on guard duty the night of Dec. 24, 2006. Witness accounts contained in documents presented at the hearing indicate that the Blackwater guard smelled of alcohol and was visibly drunk after the shooting, which took place outside the vice president's compound inside Baghdad's Green Zone.

Hulaichi, 33, was shot in the head and died, leaving a widow and two sons, ages 6 and 10. The Blackwater employee claimed he shot in self-defense, but he was fired from his job. He was flown out of Iraq by U.S. officials and never charged with a crime.