By Elizabeth Newell
There is sufficient legal jurisdiction to prosecute private security contractors who commit crimes in contingency zones such as Iraq, legal consultants said, but the Bush administration is reluctant to do so.
A panel of legal professionals, who briefed congressional staffers on Friday, said there may be room for improvement to legislation covering non-Defense Department contractors in war zones, but the statutory authority to prosecute them already exists. The 2000 Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act was expanded to cover contract workers operating in a Defense-designated "contingency area," regardless of the agency that hired them, they said. But agencies including the State and Justice departments argued that jurisdiction over these private employees remains ambiguous.
Two of the panelists, Kevin Lanigan, director of the law and security program at Human Rights First, an advocacy group based in New York, and Scott Horton, adjunct professor of law at Columbia University, wrote the recent Human Rights First report, "Private Security Contractors at War: Ending the Culture of Impunity." The report called on Congress and federal agencies to close jurisdictional gaps to ensure that contractors are held responsible for crimes committed overseas. They noted a lack of accountability caused more by "gaps of political will and resources" than by jurisdictional gray areas.
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