Iraq ends license of US security firm Blackwater

Iraq will not renew the operating license of controversial US security firm Blackwater Worldwide, an interior ministry official said Thursday.

"The contract is finished and will be not be renewed by order of the minister of the interior," ministry spokesman Major General Abdel Karim Khalaf told AFP.

"The contract has already expired," he added.

Five former guards from Blackwater, a US State Department contractor in Iraq, have gone on trial in Washington charged with killing 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 18 others by gunfire and grenades at a busy Baghdad intersection in 2007.

Critics have repeatedly accused Blackwater of having a cowboy mentality and a shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach when carrying out security duties in Iraq.

PHOTO CAPTION

File photo shows a US private security company Blackwater helicopter over Baghdad.

AFP

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