43 arrested after security guards injure woman

Iraqi officials arrested 43 people after guards protecting a convoy shot and wounded a woman Monday, setting the stage for a showdown over foreign security companies’ immunity from prosecution here.

The incident in Baghdad’s Karada district was relatively minor compared with recent shootings involving private security companies.

The worst, in which at least 17 Iraqis were killed, occurred in September and involved guards working for Blackwater USA, which protects State Department officials here.

Guards from an Australian security company, Unity Resources Group, fatally shot two women in October, and gunmen from U.S. security firm Dyncorp shot a taxi driver dead this month.

In each incident, witnesses said the shootings were unjustified, but guards said they fired after perceiving they were under threat of attack.

No one has been arrested in those shootings or in scores of previous incidents, fueling anger among Iraqis and leading to government demands for an end to guards’ immunity from prosecution for deaths or injuries to Iraqis.

The company involved in the latest incident, Almco, is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and has contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide some bases with essentials such as food, water and tents, said Army Maj. Brad Leighton, a U.S. military spokesman. It also has a contract to build a courthouse as part of U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

Leighton said Almco has its own security guards, but it was unclear if the convoy being escorted Monday was related to a U.S. Defense contract or another of Almco’s clients in Iraq.

The shooting could be a test of how far the Iraqi government is willing to carry its fight with U.S. officials, who were responsible for the 2004 ruling that has been used to protect foreign security guards from prosecution.

Leighton said those arrested were two Fijians, 10 Iraqis, 21 Sri Lankans, one Indian, and nine Nepalese.

Earlier, Brig. Gen. Qassim Moussawi, an Iraqi military spokesman, said two Americans had been arrested. Leighton said the confusion arose because the Fijians carried Department of Defense badges and were mistaken for Americans. “There are no Americans being held,” he said.

Witnesses said the injured woman was hit while trying to cross a street in Karada, a middle-class neighborhood of homes and businesses. Some said she appeared to be walking too slowly and was knocked to the ground when a man in the convoy opened his vehicle’s door as he passed.

Moussawi and Leighton said she had been shot. Leighton said her injuries were minor

“This is a message to security companies that no one is above the law,” said government spokesman Ali Dabbagh, according to Reuters.

Last month, Iraq’s Cabinet sent to parliament draft legislation that would repeal the 2004 ruling that has granted immunity to foreign security companies.

Many of the foreign companies speed along Iraqi roads in menacing-looking convoys of SUVs, ramming cars that don’t make way.

Critics say they fire indiscriminately at vehicles that pose no threat.

The immunity provision, combined with the guards’ quick exit from altercations with Iraqis, makes it virtually impossible for victims of shootings or other abuses to press charges.

tina.susman@latimes.com

Times staff writer Saif Hameed contributed to this report.