An American woman who said she was raped by US contractors in Iraq testified in Congress on Wednesday, saying that she was kept under armed guard in her trailer after reporting the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 23, said that she was gang-raped inside the Baghdad Green Zone in July 2005 while she was working for the Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc, which has support contracts with the US military.
The US Department of Justice failed to send an attorney to the House of Representatives sub-committee hearing, which Democratic Representative John Conyers blasted as "outrageous" and "unacceptable."
Jones told committee members that on her fourth day in Baghdad some co-workers, who she described as Halliburton-KBR firefighters, invited her for a drink.
"I took two sips from the drink and don't remember anything after that," she said.
The next morning Jones woke up groggy and confused, and with a sore chest and blood between her legs. She reported the incident to KBR and was examined by an army doctor, who confirmed she had been repeatedly raped vaginally and anally.
The doctor took photographs, made notes and handed all the evidence over to KBR personnel.
"The KBR security then took me to a trailer and then locked me in a room with two armed guards outside my door," Jones said.
"I was imprisoned in the trailer for approximately a day. One of the guards finally had mercy and let me use a phone," she said.
Jones called her father in Texas, who called his representative in Congress, Republican Ted Poe.
Poe contacted the US State Department, who quickly sent personnel to rescue Jones and flew her back to Texas.
The rape was so brutal she is still undergoing reconstructive surgery, Jones said.
Jones tried to get her case resolved first through KBR channels, then through the Justice Department. When neither course seemed to work, she gave an interview with ABC television news.
KBR has been silent on the matter, though according to ABC News the company circulated a memo among employees signed by company president and CEO Bill Utt saying that it "disputes portions of Ms. [Jamie Leigh] Jones' version and facts."
Jones said that she knows of at least 11 other women who were raped by US contractors in Iraq.
Jones' KBR contract, however, included a clause which prevents her from suing her employer, Poe said, which will likely force her into arbitration, which he described as "a privatized justice system with no public record, no discovery and no meaningful appeal."
There are many laws that the department "can enforce with respect to contractors who commit crimes abroad, but it chooses not to," Democratic Representative Robert Scott said.
The Justice Department "seems to be taking action with respect to enforcement of criminal laws in Iraq only when it is forced to do something by embarrassing media coverage," he said.
"This is outrageous that we even have to be here today," said Conyers, adding that it showed "how far out of control the law enforcement system in Iraq is today."
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS