KBR employee says she was gang raped by coworkers and detained in Iraq

Brian Ross and Justin Rood have broken an explosive story of rape and false imprisonment in the Green Zone that raises questions about the contractor Halliburton/KBR, the US government, and the military.

A 22-year-old former Halliburton/KBR employee says she was gang-raped by her coworkers and imprisoned by the company in a shipping container. According to papers filed in a lawsuit against KBR and its former parent company Halliburton, the victim was only released from the container after intevention by the US State Department.

KBR issued a statement that the US authorities called off the company's internal investigation. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who helped get his constituent out of the shipping container, says that the State and Justice Departments are stonewalling his investigation.   

KBR has mysteriously "lost" the rape kit after receiving in from US military doctors.

No criminal charges have been laid and KBR wants the civil suit heard in closed-door arbitration.

HT: Eric

Comments

[The Phantom]

The court of public opinion if nowhere else

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

More on contractors and the UCMJ. The new rules were part of the 2007 Military Appropriations Bill. The change came about as a result of a minor language change. Originally, only contractors serving in a war declared by Congress were under the UCMJ. Now, UCMJ applies to contractors in so-called "contingency operations," too.

I don't see any indication that change in the rules is retroactive.

[Count Zero]

More on contractors and the UCMJ. The new rules were part of the 2007 Military Appropriations Bill. The change came about as a result of a minor language change. Originally, only contractors serving in a war declared by Congress were under the UCMJ. Now, UCMJ applies to contractors in so-called "contingency operations," too.

I don't see any indication that change in the rules is retroactive.

Since when has rape ever been legal? I really don't think they need UCMJ to prosecute these guys, especially since the crime was commited on a US citizen. I just don't think they can use their 'amnesty' or whatever it is they call it, to defend illegal actions taken for non-war related matters, especially for non-combatants.

[The Phantom]

As unforgivable as such a crime would ever be, I (as a non croupier/lawyer) could envision situations where what all would see as a crime would take place where there is no juristiction.

Say a Finn assaults a Paraguayan in Anctarctica. There's no Anctarctic law, and can't say much about the Paraguayan law, and if the Finnish law never addressed such an unusual and unforseen circumstance, then maybe injustice indeed prevails.

Injustice rules when there's jury nullification, and I can see it riding high when the law systems of the world never got around to thinking of a crime committed by x against x against y in some strange place.

[cfrost]

I’m inclined to defer to Phantom’s legal knowledge and assume that if there is not an actual complete legal vacuum here, the judicial air in Iraq is probably pretty thin. The question is: how did it get that way.

It might be by maleficent design, with the object specifically being to give contractors legal cover for whatever they might want to do. Something like the old situation in maritime law where jurisdiction on the high seas was so unformed that piracy could be conducted almost indiscriminately under fig leaf constructs like letters of marque. (Aside- the oceans are still a bit lawless: I once watched twelve thousand gallons of diesel fuel deliberately pumped overboard to make room for fish.)

It might also be just an artifact of the world-class general incompetence and stupidity with which BushCo has conducted every last detail of their entire Iraq project. If they had no plans for keeping the Baghdad sewage pumping stations working, or armoring humvees, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that they had no plan to cover law in their newly, and very hastily acquired, turf.

My guess is that it’s mostly the latter, but I’d hardly be surprised if there weren't a fat dollop of the former.

[cfrost]

Oh great. More KBR high jinks.