FBI to send team to Iraq to investigate Blackwater

    WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said on Monday that it will send a team to Iraq to review the role of a U.S. private security contractor which was involved into a shooting last month, leaving nearly a dozen Iraqis dead.

    FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said that the move is taken at the request of the State Department to investigate on the evidence in the Sept. 16 shooting and pursue possible criminal charges before referring the case to "the appropriate legal authority."

Blackwater security contractors inspect the site of a roadside bomb in central Baghdad.  (AFP File Photo)
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    To ease the tension with Iraqi government following the shooting, the U.S. State Department and the Defense Department have respectively conducted investigations. Another separate investigation is also undergoing by a U.S.-Iraqi joint team.

    Blackwater, established in 1997, is the biggest of the State Department's three private security contractors. In the past three years, the private security contractor has dismissed 122 people for problems ranging from misusing weapons, alcohol and drug violations, inappropriate conduct, and violent behavior, says a congressional report released Monday.

    The report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee also says Blackwater has been involved in 195 shooting incidents since 2005, or roughly 1.4 per week.

    "In the vast majority of instances in which Blackwater fired shots, Blackwater is firing from a moving vehicle and does not remain at the scene to determine if the shots resulted in casualties," according to the report.

    Despite its questionable performance, the company has won government contracts totally worth more than 1 billion U.S. dollars since 2001, it added.

    On Sept. 16, at least 11 Iraqis were killed in a shooting when Blackwater guards were trying protecting a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Baghdad.

    For its defense, Blackwater said its guards acted in self-defense after the convoy came under attack but Iraqi witnesses have denied any attack.

Members of a private security company guard a house in Baghdad. (AFP File Photo)
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