Iraq:Iraq's cabinet approved a draft law yesterday to end foreign security firms' immunity from prosecution by scrapping a controversial decree that Iraqis say amounts to a "licence to kill".
The Bill, which has still to be approved by parliament, follows a September 16th shooting incident involving Blackwater in which 17 Iraqis were killed.
The US security firm said its guards acted lawfully, but the shooting enraged the Iraqi government.
"The cabinet has approved a law that will put non-Iraqi firms and those they employ under Iraqi law," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters after a cabinet meeting.
Iraq says there are more than 180 mainly US and European security companies in Iraq, with estimates of the number of private contractors ranging from 25,000 to 48,000. Dabbagh said the Bill proposed cancelling Order 17, a decree issued by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in 2004 shortly before it handed control to an interim Iraqi government.
The measure prevents foreign contractors from being prosecuted in local courts. Iraqi efforts to revoke it had got nowhere until the Blackwater shooting.