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.
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