[lbo-talk] apartheid thugs working for U.S. in Iraq

[Doug Henwood]

>Apartheid Enforcers Guard Iraq for the U.S.
>Marc Perelman, Forward
>18 Feb. 04
>http://forward.com/main/article.php?ref=perelman20040218608
>
>In its effort to relieve overstretched U.S. troops in Iraq, the Bush
>administration has hired a private security company staffed with former
>henchmen of South Africa's apartheid regime.
>
>The reliance on apartheid enforcers was highlighted by an attack in Iraq
>last month that killed one South African security officer and wounded
>another who worked for the subsidiary of a firm called Erinys
>International. Both men once served in South African paramilitary units
>dedicated to the violent repression of apartheid opponents.
>
>François Strydom, who was killed in the January 28 bombing of a hotel in
>Baghdad, was a former member of the Koevoet, a notoriously brutal
>counterinsurgency arm of the South African military that operated in
>Namibia during the neighboring state's fight for independence in the 1980s.
>His colleague Deon Gouws, who was injured in the attack, is a former
>officer of the Vlakplaas, a secret police unit in South Africa.
>
>"It is just a horrible thought that such people are working for the
>Americans in Iraq," said Richard Goldstone, a recently retired justice of
>the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former chief prosecutor of the
>United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia
>and Rwanda.
>
>The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and the Pentagon did not return
>requests for comment...