Baghdad – The widow of an Iraqi vice-presidential guard killed by a Blackwater USA employee said Sunday she had yet to receive compensation.
Raheem Khalif Hulaichi was on guard duty the night of Dec. 24 at Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi’s compound inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone. Witnesses, whose accounts are contained in State Department memos presented to a congressional committee looking into Blackwater, said the private guard who shot him was visibly drunk and smelled of alcohol.
The employee told investigators he shot the guard in self-defense.
Hulaichi left a widow, Umm Sajjad, 30, and two sons, ages 6 and 10. They live in a small rented house in Sadr City, the sprawling slum in northeastern Baghdad.
Even though Blackwater and the State Department agreed that the family should receive $15,000 compensation, Sajjad said they had not received money yet because the vice president’s office felt the sum was too low.
“The money of the whole world is not able to compensate for my husband, but what I want is enough to guarantee my children’s future … and to buy a house,” she said in an interview Sunday.
“I don’t want them to feel that they lost their father,” she said of her sons.
“My responsibilities now are to act as both a mother and a father.”
