"Halliburton sued for human trafficking
08/28/2008
by John Byrne
Twelve men recruited in Nepal died after forced transfer to Iraq, lawfirm says
Thirteen Nepali men were recruited and held against their will for thirteen months in a human trafficking scheme engineered and perpetrated by Halliburton and its Jordanian contractor, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in California federal court.
The Nepali men, each between the ages of 18 and 27, were allegedly hired as kitchen staff by the then-Halliburton subsidiary KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners. Once they arrived in Jordan, however, their passports were seized and they were dispatched to Iraq.
"Tragically, as the men were being transported to Iraq, a car containing twelve of the men was stopped by members of the Ansar al-Sunna Army, an insurgent group," the Washington lawfirm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll writes. "The 12 men in the car were taken hostage and executed by the insurgents. The executions were filmed and posted on the Internet.
Only one man survived. After he was released by Iraqi rebels, he said he was assigned to work as a loader/unloader in a US military warehouse facility supervised by KBR. He asserts that he was held for 15 months against his well, before the firm finally allowed him to return home to Nepal.
--MORE--"
