This weekend, five U.S. security contractors were detained by Iraqi authorities in connection with the brutal slaying of Jim Kitterman, a construction company owner whose bound and blindfolded body was found last month inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. (The Associated Press reports that four Americans and one Iraqi were placed under arrest; details are still emerging.) While the men have not been formally charged, this has the potential to be the first case of Americans tried under Iraqi law.
Last year, we read the fine print in the U.S.-Iraq security deal, which took effect on January 1. As we noted, the pact gave Iraqis primary jurisdiction over U.S. security contractors, effectively closing a loophole that had given guns-for-hire a "get out of jail free" card.
News 14 Carolina reports that the American security contractors are from Fayetteville, N.C.-based Corporate Training Unlimited, founded by ex-Delta Force member Don Feeney. According to the company website (pictured here), CTU has operated in Iraq since early 2003; it also does executive protection, training and consulting in Hong Kong and the Philippines.
An employee of CTU was killed last month when a mortar reportedly struck his trailer inside the Green Zone. Feeney told the Fayetteville Observer the employee, Larry Eugene Young, "was sleeping in his hooch when a mortar hit his trailer with a direct hit ... He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Young was killed on May 22, the same day Kitterman's body was discovered in the Green Zone.
As we reported last year, the Iraqi government pushed hard to make contractors subject to local law, particularly after public outrage in the wake of the Nisour Square shootings. If this case moves forward, it may set a serious precedent for the private security industry.
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