Iraqis detain U.S. citizens

BAGHDAD – Five U.S. contractors have been detained in the investigation of the slaying of another American in Baghdad’s Green Zone, officials said Sunday, in what may become the first case of U.S. citizens facing Iraqi justice under a security agreement that took effect this year.

U.S. and Iraqi officials said the five have not been charged in the death of Jim Kitterman, 60, a construction company owner from Houston, whose body was found May 22 in his car in the Green Zone. He had been blindfolded, bound and stabbed.

Police spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said the Americans were being held at an Iraqi police station inside the Green Zone “in connection with a joint U.S.-Iraqi investigation” into Kitterman’s death but gave no further details.

U.S. Embassy spokesman James Fennell confirmed that five Americans were in Iraqi custody but said no formal charges have been filed so he couldn’t provide further details about the detention.

A U.S. official familiar with the case said the five were being investigated for allegations other than murder.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, who supervises Iraqi police, said it appeared that Kitterman was killed because of an undisclosed “financial situation.”

The five were believed to be the first Americans taken into Iraqi custody since the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement went into effect this year. The agreement removed immunity from Iraqi law enjoyed by private U.S. contractors since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003.

Embassy officials have visited the men to make sure they’re being given their rights in accordance with Iraqi law, Fennell said, adding “the men appeared well.”

U.S. and Iraqi authorities declined to identify the contractors.

However, an official of Corporate Training Unlimited, a Fayetteville, N.C.-based security company, said the five included Donald Feeney Jr., 55, who founded the company in 1986, his son Donald Feeney III, 31, and three other employees.