Posts Tagged ‘Iraq’
2009
“The former President of Blackwater, the security firm now notorious for its excesses against Iraqi civilians, has since resigned as the company’s president but still leads as Chairman of the Board of Directors…
Since then a series of court allegations have been made against Mr. Prince and Blackwater by two former employees who accuse him and his employees of murder, weapons smuggling, condoning child prostitution, an ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring, smuggling, money laundering and worst of all, the deliberate slaughter of unarmed civilians…
He also accused Blackwater guards of boasting of kills, taking mind-altering drugs, steroids and using child prostitutes. Prince is further alleged of smuggling illegal weapons into Iraq on his private aircraft and allowing his guards to use illegal exploding bullets ‘to inflict maximum damage on Iraqis’…”
source: examiner.com
“Three US nationals who crossed into Iran via Iraq have been arrested, the state-owned Al-Alam television has reported. ‘An informed Iranian source confirmed the arrest of three Americans after they infiltrated through the Iraqi border,’ the Arabic-language television station said on Saturday. The two men and a woman entered Iranian territory a day earlier from Iraqi Kurdistan despite repeated warnings not to do so, a Kurdish official said.
A fourth American originally with the hiking party had not joined the trek due to illness, said Beshro Ahmed, a media adviser for the general security department in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. He named the three as Shane Bower, Sara Short and Joshua Steel, while Shaun Gabriel Maxwell stayed behind in their hotel in the autonomous Kurdish region’s second-largest city of Sulaimaniyah.”
source: aljazeera.net
“As the CEO of MeetUp, Scott Heiferman usually spends his days meeting with staff and brainstorming product strategy. But today the 37-year-old New Yorker, wearing a combat helmet and armored vest over a black business suit, is crammed into a battered C-130 transport plane headed for Iraq. Military and diplomatic personnel aboard are warily eyeing him and the others in his party, all similarly attired, as the C-130 begins its steep, corkscrew descent into the Baghdad airport. And Heiferman is thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’
It’s only been a few weeks since he got an email from a State Department policy planner named Jared Cohen inviting him to join the first tech delegation to post-invasion Iraq. Now he’s strapped in with eight other Silicon Valley executives, mostly in their thirties, from Google, Twitter, YouTube, Blue State Digital, WordPress, Howcast, and AT&T. When Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey got his invitation, ‘I just said yes,’ he recalls. YouTube’s director of product management, Hunter Walk, had to go down to his basement to find a suit to wear, because Cohen insisted that the group dress like diplomats to show respect for their hosts. Others worked their spouses for approval, repeating Cohen’s assurances that the security situation in Baghdad was much improved. Howcast CEO Jason Liebman’s mother thinks he’s on a trip to LA…”
source: wired.com
“An investigation into the kidnapping of five British men in Iraq has uncovered evidence of possible collusion by Iraqi government officials in their abduction, and a possible motive – to keep secret the whereabouts of billions of dollars in embezzled funds. A former high-level Iraqi intelligence operative and a current senior government minister, who has been negotiating directly with the hostage takers, have told the Guardian that the kidnapping of IT specialist Peter Moore and his four bodyguards in 2007 was not a simple snatch by a band of militants but a sophisticated operation, almost certainly with inside help. Only Moore is thought still to be alive.
Witnesses to the extraordinary operation which led to the abductions have also told us that they have been warned by superiors to keep quiet. ‘This operation was on a state level, not al-Qaida. Only the state has the capability to carry this out,’ one of the sources said.
The Guardian can also reveal that there was a sixth westerner who was working with Moore at the time of the kidnap. The man – whose identity is known to the Guardian – managed to narrowly avoid being captured by hiding in a toilet at the Iraqi ministry of finance, where the abductions took place. Over the past 10 months the Guardian has interviewed senior Iraqi figures and eyewitnesses as well as the former British military officer who investigated the kidnap for the men’s employers. Their accounts allege that the hostage takers had contacts in the Iraqi government, and also that officials in the ministry of defence warned off witnesses to the kidnap.”
source: guardian.co.uk