Jeremy Scahill on Obama's War Machine, American Assassinations & Journalism

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Comment by Tony Nuspl on July 4, 2014 at 6:06pm

Blackwater trial ongoing:  In three days of testimony, former security guard Matthew Murphy became the first Blackwater security guard to testify against his former associates in a trial expected to take months. Murphy testified that he saw Slough fire at least two grenades into a car where a woman and her son died, two of 14 Iraqis killed on Sept. 16, 2007, in a downtown Baghdad square. Slough is charged with manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and violating gun laws, as are two other defendants, Dustin Heard and Evan Liberty. A fourth defendant, Nicholas Slatten, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of the driver of the car.

"Former Blackwater Guard Testifies Against Friends"
by The Associated Press
July 03, 2014
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=328164741&...

Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 26, 2014 at 12:47pm

Blackwater trial ongoing: 

Family members and survivors have said they see this trial as a test of America’s judicial system. And though they have expressed frustration and skepticism, dozens have volunteered to take part.

The government’s first witness, Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani, broke down last week as he talked about his 9-year-old son, Ali, who was shot in the head while riding in the back seat of the family car. Mr. Kinani sobbed so uncontrollably that Judge Royce C. Lamberth sent the jury out of the room. The next day, one juror said she had been too haunted to sleep. The judge excused her.

The Nisour Square shooting was a signature point in the Iraq war, one that inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad and contributed to the impression that Americans were reckless and unaccountable. The Iraqi government wanted to prosecute the security contractors in Iraq, but the American government refused to allow it.

When the Justice Department indicted five former Blackwater guards in 2008 and reached a plea deal with a sixth, prosecutors said it was a message that, whether in a war zone or not, nobody was above the law. But the case has suffered repeated setbacks, frequently of the government’s own making. In Iraq, the delays contributed to the impression that Blackwater operated with impunity.

full article:

In a U.S. Court, Iraqis Accuse Blackwater of Killings in 2007

By Matt Apuzzo, The New York Times
June 25, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/us/in-us-court-iraqis-accusing-bl...

Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 19, 2014 at 4:24pm

Prosecutor in Blackwater trial details killing of 14 Iraqis

• Opening statements heard in federal trial of four guards
• Baghdad shootings in 2007 killed 14 and wounded 18 others

Wednesday 18 June 2014 08.11 EDT

An Iraqi woman walks past a burnt car on the site of the Blackwater incident in September 2007. Photograph: Ali Yussef/AFP/Getty

A US government prosecutor on Tuesday chronicled for a jury the alleged conduct of four Blackwater security guards accused of killing 14 Iraqis and wounding 18 others in downtown Baghdad nearly seven years ago.

In opening statements at the trial of the four guards, assistant US attorney T Patrick Martin said some of the victims were "simply trying to get out" of the way of gunfire from Blackwater guards. "Fourteen died, 18 injured. For what?" he said.

One component of the prosecutors' case is that the Blackwater guards harbored deep hostility toward Iraqis and boasted of indiscriminate firing of their weapons.

Immediately after the shootings at Nisoor Square on 16 September 2007 as soon as the guards got back to their base, they participated in a lie that there were insurgents in the area, said Martin

"That lie that they had begun that day would unravel within moments" because two veteran army officers showed up on the scene to see what was going on, he said.

The State Department hired Blackwater and Martin said it took four days for the department to arrive on the scene to look into the shootings. He said the investigation was pathetic, incomplete, haphazard and that "most of all it seemed bent on clearing the contractors."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/18/prosecutor-blackwater-...

Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 18, 2014 at 3:49pm

Blackwater Operatives Tried for Nisoor Square Massacre Following Years of Delay

A trial is underway after years of delays for four Blackwater operatives accused of killing civilians in the 2007 massacre at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The suspects are charged for the deaths of 14 of the 17 Iraqi civilians who died when their Blackwater unit indiscriminately opened fire. The case has lagged for years with prosecutors accused of dragging their feet and a lower court’s dismissal of the charges in 2009. In opening statements on Tuesday, prosecutors said the operatives had lied about the presence of insurgents in order to cover up their crime.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/18/headlines

Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 13, 2014 at 10:55am

Trial Begins for Blackwater Guards Over Baghdad Massacre

06/12/2014

Seven years after deadly Nisour Square incident, four former guards to stand trial

Photo: CODEPINK Women For Peace/cc/via flickr

Jury selection began Wednesday for the trial of four former Blackwater guards charged for their role in the infamous Nisour Square massacre that left 14 Iraqi civilians dead and wounded at least 18 others.

The defense argues that Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, Donald Ball and Nicholas Slatten, who were under contract with the State Department, were acting in self-defense in the face of an insurgent attack when they fired into the busy Baghdad traffic square in 2007.

According to court filings, prosecutors charge that Slatten had previously said that he “wanted to kill as many Iraqis as he could as ‘payback for 9/11.’” And according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, prosecutors charge it was Slatten who sparked the incident by shooting and killing the driver of a Kia sedan that was stopped in traffic.

That assertion is likely to be helped by statements made by another former Blackwater guard involved in the Nisour Square shooting, Jeremy Ridgeway, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to manslaughter charges. In court documents Ridgeway said that the incident was sparked by the Blackwater convoy shooting at the Kia vehicle, which “posed no threat to the convoy.”

Slatten faces first-degree murder charges for the killing of the Kia driver, while the other three face voluntary manslaughter charges for the deaths of the other 13 civilians. All four also face attempted manslaughter and weapons violations charges.

The case against the guards was first dismissed in 2009 by a U.S. district court but in 2011 a federal appeals court reinstated the case.

In the wake of the incident, the company changed its name to Xe Services and then to Academi.

A verdict in the case is likely months away.

_________________________

Article originally published on Common Dreams by Andrea Germanos

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Comment by Tony Nuspl on June 10, 2014 at 1:45pm

update June 2014:

7 years later, Blackwater guards go on trial

reporting by PETE YOST

WASHINGTON (AP) — After years of delays, four former guards from the security firm Blackwater Worldwide are facing trial in the killings of 14 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of 18 others in bloodshed that inflamed anti-American sentiment around the globe.

Whether the shootings were self-defense or an unprovoked attack, the carnage of Sept. 16, 2007 was seen by critics of the George W. Bush administration as an illustration of a war gone horribly wrong.

A trial in the nearly 7-year-old case is scheduled to begin with jury selection on Wednesday, barring last-minute legal developments. Prosecutors plan to call dozens of Iraqis to testify in what the Justice Department says is likely to be the largest group of foreign witnesses ever to travel to the U.S. to participate in a criminal trial.

The violence at the Nisoor Square traffic circle in downtown Baghdad was the darkest episode of contractor violence during the war in Iraq, becoming one more diplomatic disaster in a war that had many. Iraqi officials, who wanted the guards tried in a local court, were outraged.

full article, with map, photo, and videoclip: http://news.yahoo.com/7-years-later-blackwater-guards-trial-1748485...