Five Blackwater security guards were charged on Monday with killing 14 unarmed civilians and wounding 20 others last year in a shooting in Baghdad that outraged Iraqis and strained US-Iraqi relations.
US Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said one of the victims was shot in the chest while standing in the street with his hands up in the air while another victim was injured from a grenade fired into a nearby girls’ school.
In a 35-count indictment, the US Justice Department charged the men with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempt to commit manslaughter and one weapons violation count. If convicted, the men face 10 years in prison for each manslaughter charge, plus additional time for other charges.
PHOTO: AFP
“The government alleges in the documents unsealed today that at least 34 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, were killed or injured without justification or provocation by these Blackwater security guards in the shooting at Nisoor Square,” said Patrick Rowan, assistant attorney general for national security.
A sixth Blackwater guard pleaded guilty on Friday to charges of voluntary manslaughter and attempt to commit manslaughter, the Justice Department said.
An attorney on the team representing the five men, who surrendered to authorities in Salt Lake City, Utah, said they were innocent of all charges.
“They were hired as State Department contractors to protect State government officials,” Brent Hatch told reporters. “They did their job as they were contracted to do, as they were required to do, and as the State Department asked them to do it.”
The five — all decorated military veterans — declined comment as they surrendered. The five will get their day in a Washington court after unsuccessfully trying to move the trial to Utah, where one of the five guards lives, in hopes of appealing to conservative jurors who may be more sympathetic to the war in Iraq than those in Washington.
But the Justice Department argued that the case should remain in Washington. A federal magistrate in Salt Lake City agreed and on Monday ordered the guards to report to a District of Columbia courthouse on Jan. 6, where they are expected to plead not guilty.
The shooting occurred as the guards escorted a heavily armed four-truck convoy of US diplomats through Baghdad on Sept. 16 last year. The guards were responding to a car bombing when shooting erupted in a crowded intersection.
Security firms working for the US after the 2003 US-led invasion enjoyed immunity from prosecution in Iraq, but that ends on Dec. 31 under a security pact between Baghdad and Washington signed last month.
Although 17 Iraqis were killed in the shooting, US Justice Department officials said the evidence supported charges in 14 deaths. They said the investigation continues, and they planned to brief the families of the Iraqi victims.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department now faces stiff challenges to the evidence and legal grounds at the heart of its case. Most importantly, prosecutors must prove they did not rely on protected statements the guards gave to State Department investigators within hours of the shootings.
It gave limited immunity to all the guards in the four-car convoy, promising not to prosecute them based on the initial statements recounting how the violence began.
Defense attorneys also will argue that the guards cannot be charged under a law intended to cover soldiers and military contractors since the men worked as civilian contractors for the State Department.
It is the first time prosecutors have used that argument to prosecute contractors. The Justice Department recently lost a somewhat similar case against former Marine Jose Luis Nazario Jr, who was charged in Riverside, California, with killing four unarmed Iraqi detainees.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
RSS