US contractors allege Iraq abuse | WORLD | NEWS | tvnz.co.nz
Four security guards have claimed that their former employer, hired by the US government, has arbitrarily killed Iraqi civilians, an American news report said.
"These aren't insurgents that we're brutalising," retired US Army Ranger captain Bill Craun told NBC News.
"It was local civilians on their way to work. It's wrong."
Craun and three others said their former employer, Custer Battles, allowed heavily armed guards to roam Iraq brutalising civilians, while they were supposed to be guarding supply convoys from rebels.
Custer Battles was one subject of a congressional hearing on Tuesday into allegations of corruption in Iraq.
A lawyer representing former employees told the Democratic senators the firm had received millions of dollars for work not done because of the owners' connections with the Republican Party.
The four former employees told NBC that their convoys fired on Iraqi pedestrians and crushed children with a truck.
The US Army was looking into the allegations, NBC said.
The men claimed that on November 8, a Kurd guard travelling with them fired into a passenger car to move traffic out of the way.
He "sighted down his AK-47 and started firing," former army corporal Ernest Colling told NBC.
The bullet "went through the window. As far as I could see, it hit a passenger. And they didn't even know we were there."
Colling said that later that day, an Iraqi teenager walking on the roadside was shot.
"The rear gunner in my vehicle shot him," Colling told NBC.
"Unarmed, walking kids."
And a large Ford pickup truck crushed a smaller car with Iraqis inside.
"The front of the truck came down," Craun said.
"I could see two children sitting in the back seat of that car with their eyes looking up at the axle as it came down and pulverised the back."
Will Hough, a retired US Marine said it was unlikely that anyone survived.
"Probably not. Not from what I saw," Hough told NBC.
Colling and Craun told NBC that they quit immediately.
Retired sergeant Jim Errante said he quit after witnessing similar abuses on other occasions.
"I didn't want to be a witness to any of these, what could be classified as a war crime," Errante told NBC.
The network said company officials denied the allegations, calling the four men "disgruntled" former employees.
The company's manager in Iraq, Paul Christopher, who told NBC
"There has absolutely never been a case of anyone being hurt or killed to my knowledge, except for people who were actively engaged in shooting at us first".
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