No Cover-up! Hold Contactors Responsible

So what’s been happening with Halliburton? Ugly, ugly stuff, even against their own…

Gang Rape Cover-Up by US, Halliburton/KBR

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident. Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job. “Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

Justice department accused of delaying Iraq rape inquiry, U.K. Guardian, December 13, 2007.

A US senator came forward today on behalf of the second woman in a week to allege rape by private contractors in Iraq, worsening a controversy that has already sparked a congressional hearing.

Democratic senator Bill Nelson questioned whether the justice department had dragged its feet in the cases of an anonymous woman from Tampa, Florida, and Jamie Lynn Jones, a Texas woman who disclosed her rape charge to ABC news this week.

Both women say they were sexually assaulted by employees of KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary, in Iraq in 2005.

Nelson wrote to attorney general Michael Mukasey to confirm reports that the US navy criminal investigative service (NCIS) had investigated the rape charge and told the justice department of its findings.

He asked Mukasey whether more women have raised rape charges against private contractors and whether the government has responded.

“Both of these incidents occurred approximately two years ago, yet no one has been charged in either case,” Nelson wrote.

From Moveon.org:

Jamie Leigh Jones was working in Iraq for a subsidiary of Halliburton when she was drugged and brutally gang-raped by several coworkers. For the last two years, she’s been asking the US government to hold the perpetrators accountable, but the men who raped her may never be brought to justice because Halliburton and other contractors in Iraq aren’t subject to US or Iraqi laws.

I just signed MoveOne’s petition urging Congress to investigate the rape of Jamie Leigh Jones, hold those involved accountable, and bring US contractors under the jurisdiction of US law.

Will you join me?

Related:

“Halliburton hit in rape lawsuit,” New York Daily News, December 11, 2007

“Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR,” ABC News, December 10, 2007

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=3977702

Jamie’s Journal, The Jamie Leigh Foundation

“Female ex-employees sue KBR, Halliburton—report,” Reuters, June 29, 2007

“Blackwater Probe Narrows Focus to Guards,” Associated Press, December 8, 2007

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