DynCorp security guards shoot taxi driver dead in Baghdad
London Times | November 13, 2007
By Deborah Haynes
Guards working for an American private security firm have shot dead an Iraqi taxi driver in the latest in a series of killings that has prompted a shake-up of Iraq's multibillion-dollar foreign security industry.
Iraqi security sources said that the shooting took place on Saturday afternoon, when the driver's car passed too close to a seven-vehicle US convoy in western Baghdad that was being protected by DynCorp International guards.
DynCorp and the US Embassy in the Iraqi capital confirmed that an incident had taken place but could not say whether anyone had been killed or injured.
The death will add fuel to a debate that is already raging about the rules governing foreign private security companies in Iraq after a gunfight in mid-September involving Blackwater, another US firm, in which 17 Iraqis were killed.
Last month, the Iraqi Cabinet approved a draft law lifting the immunity from prosecution enjoyed by foreign security companies contracted by the US-led coalition.
DynCorp, a Virginia-based company, was working with the Ministry of Interior to investigate what happened in the Saturday shooting, said Philip Reeker, a US Embassy spokesman.
“DynCorp did inform the Embassy that at 12.45pm on Saturday, there had been a security incident involving a DynCorp PSD [private security detail] in Baghdad,” Mr Reeker said.
“They reported that a private vehicle approached the convoy, and continued to approach to the point where a member of the PSD used his weapon to disable the vehicle.”
A policeman on the scene said that the taxi driver had been shot in the chest and died while being rushed to hospital. Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman, also confirmed that the man had died.
“The man killed was driving a civilian car, a white Hyundai Elantra, with a taxi sign on it," the police officer told the French news agency AFP.
“He came off the highway as the convoy ... was passing. There were Iraqis and foreigners inside the cars, they were pointing Kalashnikovs and other rifles out the windows,” he said.
The convoy had been driving on the wrong side of the road – a tactic adopted to bypass traffic in Baghdad's congested streets, the policeman said. It stopped for a moment, with one car some way behind, and then pushed on.
“As soon as the taxi driver started to move, guards in the last car, which apparently he had not seen, opened fire on him. They fired three shots, one hit him in the chest, and two hit the engine of the car,” the policeman said.
In Iraq, where DynCorp has worked since 2004, the company guards State Department and other US government employees, a US official said.
The actions of private security companies, which have thrived in the hostile environment in Iraq, came under increased scrutiny after the September 16 Blackwater shooting in Baghdad.
Blackwater has said that its convoy was under attack before it opened fire, but initial investigations by Iraqi and US authorities have concluded otherwise.
