Thursday, July 26, 2007

The Last Thing We Need

More bad news:

A pair of whistleblowers alleged Thursday that the contractor selected to build the U.S. embassy in Iraq "kidnapped" foreign nationals to work on the $592 million construction project, luring low-wage laborers into a war zone under false promises that they would be working at hotels in Dubai.

[...]

The allegations have been vigorously disputed by both First Kuwaiti and the State Department inspector general, who investigated the claims.

"Let me spell it out clearly. I believe these men were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work on the U.S. Embassy," said Mayberry, who worked for the contractor for less than a week providing emergency medical services to construction workers. "They had no passports because they were confiscated at the Kuwait Airport. When the airplane touched down at Baghdad Airport, they were loaded into buses and taken away. Later, I found out they were smuggled into the Green Zone. They had no IDs, no passports, nothing."

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