Sterloop

[pynchonoid]

No word yet on Sterloop sightings...

[...] When a suicide bomber parked a van disguised as
an ambulance in front of the Shaheen Hotel in the
Karadah neighborhood of Baghdad on Jan. 28 and blew
himself up, he killed four people and wounded scores
of others.

He also blew the lid off a dirty little secret of the
Coalition Provisional Authority: Due to its
"outsourcing" of privatized security services, the CPA
has put terrorists, mercenaries and war criminals on
the payrolls of companies contracted by the Pentagon.

After the Shaheen Hotel blast, departmental spokesman
Ronnie Mamoepa at South Africa's Foreign Ministry
confirmed that one of the Westerners killed was South
African Frans Strydom. Four of the wounded were also
South African nationals, including Deon Gouws, who
sustained serious injuries.

News that Strydom and Gouws were in Iraq sent
shockwaves throughout South Africa: In front of the
South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
both men were granted amnesty after confessing to
killing blacks and terrorizing anti-apartheid
activists, acts that can only be called crimes against
humanity.

In Iraq, Strydom and Gouws were employed by Erinys
International, a security firm based in the United
Kingdom. Erinys Iraq, the subsidiary of Erinys
International, was awarded a two-year, $80 million
contract in August 2003 to protect 140 Iraqi oil
installations. Erinys has been awarded subcontracts to
protect American construction contractors, including
Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root.

"It is just a horrible thought that such people are
working for the Americans," said Richard Goldstone,
former chief prosecutor of the United Nations
International Criminal Tribunals for the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda, speaking to European reporters
last month.

Strydom was a member in the Koevoet, Afrikaner for
"Crowbar," an outlaw group that paid bounty for the
bodies of blacks seeking independence during the
1980s. The Koevoet terrorized blacks in Namibia and
northern South Africa for more than a decade. Hundreds
of deaths are attributed to its members.

More notorious is Gouws' past. A former police
officer, Gouws was a member of the notorious Vlakplaas
death squad that terrorized blacks under apartheid.
Only after South Africa established the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, and Col. Eugene de Kock, a
former death-squad leader who supervised Gouws,
applied for amnesty, did the activities of the
Vlakplaas come to light. Gouws faced a choice: repent
by confessing, or be charged with crimes. He applied
for amnesty, confessing on his application for
absolution to killing 15 blacks and firebombing the
homes of "between 40 and 60 anti-apartheid activists."

There are an estimated 1,500 South Africans employed
by security contractors in Iraq, according to the
South African foreign ministry. Many used their
backgrounds as mercenaries during Apartheid to bolster
their credentials.

After being pardoned but ostracized in South Africa,
"Where are these men expected to go?" asked Judge
Goldstone. [...]

<http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18588>


	
		
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