Families: Men trafficked for military work

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By Ann McGlynn | Saturday, August 30, 2008 |

A 22-year-old part-time teacher and farmer who maintained the water pump for his village in Nepal, Prakash Adhikari, left his family for a job as a cleaner at a hotel in Jordan.

Nineteen-year-old Ramesh Khadka did the same. He left his work as a farmer and stone cutter for a $500-a-month job as a cook in Jordan. His parents, subsistence farmers, took out a loan to pay for his travel.

Bishnu Thapa was 18 years old working at a Nepali hydropower plant when he responded to an ad for jobs in Jordan paying between $200 and $500 a month. His mother took out a $2,100 loan at 36 percent interest per month to pay for him to go to the Le Royal Hotel to work as a cleaner.

However, the men, along with nine others, only stayed in Jordan for a short time. Instead, they were sent to Iraq.

It is there they were kidnapped and killed four years ago on their way to the Al Asad airbase to work for a subcontractor for KBR.

Their families, along with a man who arrived safely at the airbase, are suing KBR and Daoud & Partners of Jordan, a firm on subcontract with KBR. Attorneys believe the men were heading to perform work on the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, a multibillion-dollar contract overseen by a command on the Rock Island Arsenal.

KBR was awarded the

LOGCAP III contract in 2001. The contract provides laundry, food, warehousing and other logistical services to the military.

The men were sent to Iraq against their will, their passports confiscated, said Agnieszka Fryszman, one of the attorneys representing the men in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. She calls what happened to them “human trafficking.”

“You can’t just trick people into going to someplace dangerous,” she said. “They should not be using men and women from third-world countries as disposable labor.”

Heather Browne, spokeswoman for KBR, said the company “is still reviewing the lawsuit so it is premature for us to comment at this time.

“The safety and security of all employees and those the company serves remains KBR’s top priority. The company in no way condones or tolerates unethical or illegal behavior. Each employee is expected to adhere to the company’s Code of Business Conduct and complete ethics training, which includes TIPS (Trafficking in Persons) information,” she said in an e-mail statement.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Sustainment Command at the Rock Island Arsenal could not be reached for comment Saturday. The Army is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

The men’s story first came to light in a 2005 investigation by the Chicago Tribune. A Department of Defense investigation ensued. After consulting with a variety of officials, including LOGCAP contracting officers, defense leadership found “we have found no reason to question the sequence or accuracy” of the Tribune series, documents state.

Since then, the military has tightened its oversight of human trafficking issues in the war zone.

According to the lawsuit:

The men, between the ages of 18 and 27, were recruited by the defendants and their subcontractors. Most were told they were going to work in luxury hotels in Jordan or in an “American Camp.” They were told they would not be in danger, and that they would be paid $500 per month.

The brokerage fee for these jobs ranged from $1,000 to $3,500 per person, which is more than a decade’s worth of pay for people in Nepal.

When they arrived in Jordan, they lived in a house for a month without any routine work. They were required to turn over their passports. They also were told they would be charged an additional fee, as much as two months’ pay, and would only receive about three-quarters of the salary promised.

They then learned they were going to Iraq.

“Several of the men phoned their relatives in Nepal in a panic,” the lawsuit says. “The men desperately wanted to return home to Nepal, rather than proceed into the Iraqi war zone. However, because of the large debts their families had assumed to pay the brokers, the men were compelled to proceed to Iraq.”

The lawsuit continues:

The men traveled to Iraq on one of the most dangerous highways in the region. They were kidnapped by insurgents at a check point. An execution video showed one man beheaded with a saw, the others shot in the back of the head as they lay face down in a ditch.

The lawsuit follows a judgment from the Department of Labor to the families, based on worker’s compensation claims.

Dozens of others, including the one living man included as a plaintiff, were subjected to similar trafficking tactics, the lawsuit says.

“The trail always kind of ends with KBR,” Fryszman said.

Ann McGlynn can be contacted at (563) 383-2336 or amcglynn@qctimes.com.