From today's Nation magazine and Democracy Now’s exclusive “Blackwater’s Youngest Victim” http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/scahill; http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/29/exclusiveblackwaters_youngest_victim_father_of_9
Edited excerpt for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett
“Shortly after 9 a.m. Mohammed Kinani was preparing to leave his house for work at his family’s auto parts business in Baghdad when his sister, Jenan, called and asked him to pick up her and her children across town and bring them back to his home for a visit.… Mohammed Kinani's youngest son, 9-year-old Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani, asked his father if he could accompany him.
“A few blocks from Nisour Square, they encountered two Iraqi checkpoints and were waved through. As [the family] approached the square, they saw one armored vehicle and then another, with men brandishing machine guns atop each vehicle…. The armored cars swiftly blocked off traffic.
“One of the gunners held both fists in the air, which Mohammed took as a gesture to stop. ‘Myself and all the cars before and behind me stopped … We followed their orders. I thought they were some sort of unit belonging to the American military, or maybe just a military police unit. Any authority giving you an order to stop, you follow the order.’
“It turns out the men in the armored cars were neither U.S. military nor MPs. They were members of a Blackwater team code-named Raven 23. …
Iraqi Police Officer Ali Khalaf Salman ─
“Iraqi police officer Ali Khalaf Salman approached [a] Kia sedan and it started to slowly drift. The driver had been shot and the car was gliding in neutral toward a Blackwater armored car. … He saw a panicked woman inside the car; she was clutching a young man covered in blood who had been shot in the head. … Salman remembered looking toward the Blackwater shooters [and raised his left arm high in the air to try to signal to the convoy to stop the shooting]. He said he thought the men would cease fire, given that he was a clearly identified police officer.
Mohammed Kinani (Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani’s father) ─
“‘As the officer was waving, the men on the armored cars started shooting at that car, and it wasn’t warning shots; they were shooting as in a battle. It was as though they were in a fighting field. I thought the police officer was killed. It was insane.’ Officer Salman managed to dive out of the way as the bullets rained down. ‘I saw parts of the woman’s head flying in front of me,’ recalled his colleague, Officer Sarhan Thiab. ‘They immediately opened heavy fire at us.’
“The Nisour Square massacre had begun.”
Mohammed Kinani (Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani’s father) ─
“‘One young Iraqi man got out of his car to run, and as he fled, the Blackwater shooter gunned him down and continued firing into his body as it lay on the pavement …
“‘He was on the ground bleeding, and they’re shooting nonstop, and it wasn’t single bullets. The Blackwater shooter … would fire at other Iraqis and cars and then return to pump more bullets into the dead man on the ground.
“‘He sank in his own blood, and every minute the [Blackwater shooter] would shoot left and right and then go back to shoot the dead man, and I could see that his body would shake with every bullet. He was already dead, but his body was still reacting to the bullets.
“‘[The shooter] would fire at someone else and then go back to shoot at this dead man. …
“‘The guy is dead in a pool of blood. Why would you continue shooting him?’…
“[In Mohammed’s vehicle, as the shooting intensified, he yelled for the kids to get down]. … ‘My car was hit many times in different places. All I could hear from my car was the gun shots and the sound of glass shattering’…
“Bullets pierced [his] SUV through the front windshield. A bullet hit the rearview mirror, causing it to whack Mohammed in the face. ‘We imagined that in a few seconds everyone was going to die ─ everyone in the car, my sister and I and our children.…’
“Then the shooting stopped.…
“As the Blackwater forces retreated, Mohammed told Jenan [his sister] he was going to go check on the man who had been repeatedly shot by Blackwater.
“‘I was deeply impacted by that man they continued shooting at.’ As Mohammed exited his car, his nephew yelled, ‘Uncle, Ali is dead. Ali is dead!’ Jenan began to scream.
“Mohammed rushed around to Ali’s door and saw that the window was broken. He looked inside and saw his son’s head resting against the door. He opened the door, and Ali slumped toward him. ‘I was standing in shock looking at him as the door opened and his brain fell on the ground between my feet … I looked and his brain was on the ground.’”…
Mohammed Kinani (Ali Mohammed Hafedh Kinani’s father) ─
“‘I wish the U.S. Congress would ask [Blackwater company owner Erik Prince] why they killed my innocent son… Do you think that this child was a threat to your company? This giant company that has the biggest weapons, the heaviest weapons, the planes, and this boy was a threat to them? …
“‘I want Americans to know that
this was a child that died for nothing.’”
Sources and notes
“Blackwater’s Youngest Victim,” by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation magazine, January 28, 2010, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/scahill
“… Blackwater’s Youngest Victim: Father of 9 Year-Old Killed in Nisour Square Gives Most Detailed Account of Massacre to Date, Democracy Now exclusive: Report from journalist Jeremy Scahill who has conducted in-depth investigations of the Nisour Squre massacre and of nine-year old Ali Kinani who died after being shot in the head by Blackwater shooters. Scahill filed the exclusive report with Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films. Ali Kinani’s father who has provided the most detailed eyewitness account of the massacre is suing the private military contractor, January 28, 2010,:,” http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/29/exclusiveblackwaters_youngest_victim_father_of_9
No comments:
Post a Comment