WASHINGTON (Agencies)
Federal prosecutors are looking into whether employees of private U.S. security contractor Blackwater USA has shipped unlicensed automatic weapons and military goods into Iraq.
One U.S. government official said the U.S. Attorney's office in Raleigh, N.C. is in the early stages of an investigation that so far focuses on individual Blackwater employees and not the company, according to CNN online News.
Two former Blackwater employees have pleaded guilty in Greenville, North Carolina, to weapons charges and are cooperating with the investigation, The News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina reported.
Federal prosecutors in North Carolina are handling the case, the paper added.
Blackwater, based in Moyock, North Carolina, employs around
1,000 contractors to protect the U.S. mission and it diplomats in Iraq.
The newspaper quoted two unnamed sources as saying prosecutors are probing whether Blackwater was shipping weapons, night-vision scopes, armor, gun kits and other military goods to Iraq without the required permits. |
 |
Illegal weapons The flow of illegal weapons in Iraq has been a major concern in recent months, according to CNN News online.
The State Department and Pentagon launched their own investigation following complaints from the Turkish government in July that they had seized American made weapons from the PKK, CNN reported.
The News and Observer also reported that prosecutors are probing whether Blackwater lacked permits for dozens of automatic weapons used at its training grounds in Moyock.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has suggested the U.S. Embassy stop using Blackwater after what Iraq called a flagrant assault by the firm's contractors in which 11 people were killed on Sunday while the firm was escorting an embassy convoy through Baghdad.
The probe by federal prosecutors began well before that incident.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Iraqi government's investigation into Sunday's shootings has expanded to include allegations about Blackwater's involvement in six other violent incidents this year that left at least 10 Iraqis dead.
The issue of alleged weapons smuggling by a U.S. contractor in Iraq surfaced earlier in the week in a letter from an influential congressional committee chairman, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, to Howard Krongard, the inspector general for the State Department.
Waxman accused Krongard of interfering with investigations into waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.
"You impeded efforts by your investigators to cooperate with a Justice Department probe into allegations that a large private security contractor was smuggling weapons into Iraq," Waxman told Krongard in a letter dated Sept. 18.
Waxman's letter did not specifically name Blackwater. |
