Private security guard kills taxi driver

A witness said the taxi was not moving before the driver was shot.

BAGHDAD (AP) — A private security guard fatally shot an Iraqi taxi driver, Iraqi officials said Monday, in the latest incident involving what Iraqis believe are unprovoked killings by contractors hired to protect Americans.

A spokesman for DynCorp International, a Falls Church, Va.-based company, said one of its security teams opened fire Saturday to disable a vehicle in Baghdad after it approached a convoy in a threatening manner.

DynCorp International is among three firms — along with Blackwater Worldwide and Triple Canopy — under contract to protect American diplomats and other officials in Iraq.

Iraqi officials said the shooting took place Saturday at 12:45 p.m. across from a children’s playground in Baghdad’s Atafiyah neighborhood, when a taxi driver pulled up close to a convoy of seven U.S. vehicles driving through the area.

Security personnel signaled for the taxi to pull away, and then one of the guards opened fire on the car, they said.

The driver was shot in the chest and head, but was still alive when local shopkeepers and police rushed to help him, witnesses and police said. He died in a police car on the way to the hospital, said Ahmed Adel, a barber who watched the events unfold outside his shop.

“The convoy stopped at an intersection where there was little traffic jam. ... Suddenly, guards from the last SUV opened fire on the taxi while it was totally motionless and no threat whatsoever to the convoy,” Adel said. “We rushed to the car and helped the police pull him out.”

He added that the taxi’s gearshift was in neutral when they pulled the driver out, suggesting that his car was not moving when he was shot.

It was the latest shooting by private security contractors perceived by many here as operating above the law. The U.S. government has offered some guards limited immunity under deals that have slowed prosecution of other shooting cases and angered Iraqis.

In September, another shooting left 17 Iraqis dead and prompted the Iraqi government to call for the expulsion of the firm involved, Blackwater Worldwide. The company has said its convoy was under attack before it opened fire, but initial investigations by Iraqi and U.S. authorities have concluded otherwise.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry immediately opened an investigation into Saturday’s shooting, said spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf.

The incident came just two days before the arrival of two top U.S. officials sent from Washington to investigate the role of private security companies in Iraq.