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Us troops looted baghdad airport Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Jul. 7, 2003. 10:32 PM
U.S. troops accused of looting Baghdad airport
BAGHDAD (AP-CP) — U.S. forces ransacked Baghdad's international airport when they took it over, former Iraqi airport staff say, blaming the troops for destroying aircraft as well as the airport's interior.
Abdel Hakim el-Hassan, director of the duty free shops, said he returned to the airport after Saddam Hussein's fall to find smashed liquor bottles, missing jewelry and beat up airplanes.
U.S. military spokesmen in Baghdad declined to comment on the accusations. The military has also denied journalists access to the airport to investigate the Iraqi claims.
"U.S. estimates of the cost of the damage and theft begin at a few million dollars and go as high as $100 million (US)," Time magazine reported on its Web site Monday.
El-Hassan said a U.S. serviceman accompanied him to the airport after the war. He was astonished by what he saw.
"I told the American soldier, `You're the liberator, this is your fault,' " he said. "It was all messed up, there were things stolen and missing."
The theft and vandalism — especially of the Boeing aircraft — could set back efforts to get Iraq's air travel up and running again. It could also undermine U.S. efforts to win the confidence of Iraqis as Washington seeks to impose law and order and quell a violent uprising by anti-U.S. insurgents.
Aziz Hussein, 54, the chief steward of Iraqi Airways said two or three Boeing aircraft had been badly damaged. He did not elaborate on the nature of the damage or how much it would cost to fix.
But Time said the airplanes had suffered the greatest damage.
"Of the 10 Iraqi Airways jets on the tarmac when the airport fell, a U.S. inspection in early May found that five were serviceable: three 727s, a 747 and a 737. Over the next few weeks, U.S. soldiers looking for comfortable seats and souvenirs ripped out many of the planes' fittings, slashed seats, damaged cockpit equipment and popped out every windshield," Time reported.
U.S. military policy prohibits soldiers from taking war trophies of any kind or from looting conquered areas. Customs inspectors regularly search soldiers returning from Iraq.
Many Iraqis have claimed that U.S. soldiers raiding their homes in search of insurgents steal money and valuables — something the U.S. military denies.
El-Hassan said U.S. soldiers who've been camping out on the airport's grounds helped themselves to duty free goods such as jewelry and liquor. He said he was at the airport in the days leading up to the Iraq war and that the goods and retail outlets were all untouched.
"There were broken bottles of whiskey, some had been emptied. There were watches and jewelry missing," he said, adding that half a million dollars worth of goods from the duty free area alone was missing or destroyed.
Hussein said he went to the airport in March, several days before the coalition's bombing campaign began, and together with engineers took out engines and radio equipment from the aircraft and "put them in a big container in the airport somewhere."
Hussein would not say if the container and its contents were retrieved.
The airport — formerly known as Saddam International Airport — was renamed Baghdad International Airport after forces from the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division captured it on April 3.
"They (U.S. soldiers) were the ones who stole things because no Iraqis have been allowed to go inside," el-Hassan said.
The airport lies about 15 kilometres west of Baghdad. Its four-kilometre runway was pockmarked by bombs during the war and since then U.S. forces and Iraqi labourers have been working to repair the damage.
The top U.S. official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, has said he hopes to have the airport ready for commercial flights by mid-July and has put out tenders for international airlines to begin flying into Baghdad soon.
United Nations sanctions imposed on Iraq before the war prohibited commercial air travel to and from the country. Since the first Gulf War in 1991, the airport was used for domestic flights and for receiving sporadic shipments of food and medicine under the UN oil-for-food program.
Hussein said the airline still has planes in Jordan, Tunisia and Iran that could presumably be used again.
Baghdad International Airport today is more than just a U.S. military base. The captured members of Saddam's ousted regime are being detained there.
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