1115.org

L.A. Times:

The widow of an Iraqi vice presidential guard shot to death on Christmas Eve by a Blackwater USA employee said today she has not yet received any compensation.

Umm Sajjad said the office of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, for whom her husband was working when he died, was handling the case and told her that they had rejected the proposed sum as too low. State Department documents say that Blackwater and the U.S. State Department had agreed that $15,000 was a fair amount.

An official in Mehdi’s office said the vice president was seeking $100,000 for the family. The official said $20,000 had been sent but that it had not been given to the guard’s family because the office felt it was too little. The official requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the sensitive topic.
[...]
According to State Department documents, a U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad, who was not identified, initially recommended that Blackwater pay $250,000 to the guard’s family and then lowered the sum to $100,000. Both amounts were dismissed as too high by the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, and an amount of $15,000 was agreed upon.

They keep saying $15,000 was agreed upon. Who are the parties to this agreement supposed to have been? Doesn’t sound like Umm Sajjad was a party to it: “I heard that there was going to be compensation from the security company, but so far nothing has been received. Not a single penny.” Doesn’t sound like Vice President Mehdi’s was a party to it either.

So what was it, a tripartite agreement between Blackwater USA, the Embassy and Diplomatic Security Service (who obviously acted as an independent agent)?