Woman accuses US contractors in Iraq of rape as Justice Department shuns hearing

The Department of Justice refused to send a representative Wednesday to answer questions from the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, and to date no charges have been filed in the case. Justice officials claim that they decided not to testify so as not to compromise any ongoing investigation.

The lack of response by the Justice Department to Jones’s charges is in keeping with the government’s record of shielding private contractors in Iraq from investigation and prosecution, as in the massacre of civilians in Baghdad last September by private security guards from Blackwater USA.

Jones says that the gang rape took place in July 2005, on her fourth night in Iraq at Camp Hope in the US-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad. She says that she met up with co-workers, working as firefighters, and one of them gave her a drink she believed was laced with the date-rape drug Rohypnol. “I took two sips from the drink and don’t remember anything after that,” she told the committee.