Embassy laborers allegedly abused

WASHINGTON – Two American civilian contractors who worked on a massive U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad told Congress on Thursday that foreign laborers were deceptively recruited and trafficked to Iraq to toil at the site, where they experienced physical abuse and substandard working conditions.

State Department officials disputed the charges, telling a House committee that inspections had not substantiated the worst reported abuses.

The conflicting accounts were delivered at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on allegations of waste, fraud and abuse in the construction of a huge new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad at a cost of nearly $600 million. The embassy, slated to be the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, is being built by a Kuwait-based firm, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., which was awarded the contract after no American company would meet the terms, the committee was told.

First Kuwaiti’s labor practices are under investigation by the Justice Department, which is looking into allegations that foreign employees were brought into Iraq under false pretenses and then were unable to leave because the company had confiscated their passports.

First Kuwaiti has called those allegations “ludicrous.” The company declined the committee’s invitation to testify or provide officials for interviews, said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee.