Sort of Illegal!

In 2004, a company named Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) was operating in Jordan when it accepted 12 Nepalese men to work as kitchen staffs in Jordan. Once the men arrived to Jordan their passports were seized and they were forced to travel to work in Iraq. On their way there, they were kidnapped and killed and the videos of their murders were posted on the internet.

This is according to a lawsuit filed by the victims' relatives against KBR and their Jordanian subcontractors Daoud and Partner.

You can check the story in details on AFP and CNN and Reuters's websites.

I won't be surprised if it turned to be true.
Why not, when the victims involved were from Nepal, the citizens of which we consider sub-human just like those of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India.
Or when you know that they were poor, not hoping to return to their country without some savings to support them and their families, pushing them into accepting risks that did cost them their lives.

How does our government allow such companies to operate in Jordan? Does the hunger for profit blind us into tricking (actually forcing) poor naive men into doing jobs they didn't want to do.

And when you know that KBR is a subsidiary of the Dick Cheney-owned Halliburton, that makes it a little less surprising.

What's interesting, is that Daoud and Partners announced the cease of operations in Iraq in 2004 after two Jordanians workers in Iraq were kidnapped. It did so only after relatives of one driver threatened to chop off the head of the firm director!!

To the poor Nepalese I'm saying: start forming your own tribe in Jordan, that may be the only way you can protect your workers in Jordan.