NY Times: Judge Drops Charges from Blackwater Deaths in Iraq
WASHINGTON — In a significant blow to the Justice Department, a federal judge on Thursday threw out the indictment of five former Blackwater security guards over a shooting in Baghdad in 2007 that left 17 Iraqis dead and about 20 wounded.
The judge cited misuse of statements made by the guards in his decision, which brought to a sudden halt one of the highest-profile prosecutions to arise from the Iraq war. The shooting at Nisour Square frayed relations between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration and put a spotlight on the United States’ growing reliance on private security contractors in war zones.Investigators concluded that the guards had indiscriminately fired on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified assault near the crowded traffic circle on Sept. 16, 2007. The guards contended that they had been ambushed by insurgents and fired in self-defense.
A trial on manslaughter and firearm offenses was planned for February, and the preliminary proceedings had been closely watched in the United States and Iraq.
But in a 90-page opinion, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court in Washington wrote that the government’s mishandling of the case “requires dismissal of the indictment against all the defendants.”
In a “reckless violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights,” the judge wrote, investigators, prosecutors and government witnesses had inappropriately relied on statements that the guards had been compelled to make in debriefings by the State Department shortly after the shootings. The State Department had hired the guards to protect its officials.
Jeremy Scahill: Fed Judge Gives Blackwater Huge New Year's Gift, Dismisses All Charges in Iraq Massacre
A federal judge in Washington DC has given Erik Prince’s Blackwater mercenaries a huge New Year’s gift. Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed all charges against the five Blackwater operatives accused of gunning down 14 innocent Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in September 2007. Judge Urbina’s order, issued late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve is a stunning blow for the Iraqi victims’ families and sends a clear message that US-funded mercenaries are above all systems of law—US and international.In a memo defending his opinion, Urbina cited a similar rationale used in the dismissal of charges against Iran-Contra figure Oliver North—namely that the government violated the rights of the Blackwater men by using statements they made to investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting to build a case against the guards, which Urbina said qualified for “derivative use immunity.” Urbina wrote that he agreed that “the government violated [the Blackwater guards’] constitutional rights by utilizing statements they made to Department of State investigators, which were compelled under a threat of job loss.” He added that the “government is prohibited from using such compelled statements or any evidence obtained as a result of those statements” to bring indictments.
Urbina concluded: “the government has utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants’ statements or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, the court must dismiss the indictment against all of the defendants.”
The Nisour Square massacre was the single deadliest incident involving private US forces in Iraq. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and more than twenty wounded.
For those interested, here are the judge’s order and the 90 page memo defending the order.
BBC: Iraq 'regrets' US decision to clear Blackwater guards
Iraq has criticised a US judge's dismissal of all charges against guards from US security firm Blackwater over the killing of 17 Iraqis in 2007.Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said an Iraqi investigation showed the men had committed a "serious crime" and Baghdad would seek to prosecute them.
The five had all pleaded not guilty to manslaughter. A sixth guard admitted killing at least one Iraqi.
The judge dismissed the charges against the guards over procedural errors.
District Judge Ricardo Urbina said the US justice department had used evidence prosecutors were not supposed to have.
Mr al-Dabbagh said the Iraqi government "regrets and is disappointed by the US court's decision".
"Inquiries carried out by the Iraqi government clearly confirm that the Blackwater guards committed a crime and used weapons when there was no threat necessitating the use of force," he said.
He said Iraq would "act forcefully and decisively to prosecute the Blackwater criminals".
The Iraqi human rights minister, Wejdan Mikhail, said she was "astonished" by the US move.
"There was so much work done to prosecute these people and to take this case into court and I don't understand why the judge took this decision," the AFP news agency quoted her as saying.
Al Jazeera: 'They kept pumping bullets into us'
The Iraqi government is under increasing pressure to aggressively pursue the prosecution of American military personnel accused of killing Iraqis.The recent decision by Ricardo Urbina, a district judge, to dismiss charges against five security contractors accused of gunning down 17 Iraqis, including women and children, in September 2007 has re-ignited deep discord among Iraqis, and fuelled suspicions that US personnel operate in a lawless void while in Iraq.
An Iraqi investigation into the incident two years ago contradicted Blackwater claims that its contractors had fired in self-defence after coming under attack in central Baghdad. In January 2008, the Iraqi government barred Blackwater from providing security detail to US diplomatic staff in the country, citing the firm's use of excessive force.
A US congressional investigation into Blackwater operations appeared to corroborate Baghdad's accusations that the firm routinely used "excessive" and "pre-emptive" force. In November 2007, FBI investigators found that 14 of the 17 killings had been "unjustified" and violated "deadly force rules" for security contractors operating in Iraq.However, Urbina threw out the case last week saying that US justice department prosecutors had improperly used sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity.
While the Iraqi government said it regretted the judge's decision and vowed to appeal the ruling, ordinary Iraqis are left wondering at the apparent double standards of a legal system which could pioneer rendition, imprisonment and torture based on far less evidence, but fumble a case like this.
However, Mohammed Kinani, whose nine-year-old son Ali was killed in the shooting, told Al Jazeera that Urbina's dismissal does not signal the end of the criminal or civil cases brought against Blackwater.
"The FBI has been investigating this case for 27 months and there are witnesses to the event as well as forensic evidence which indicate that this is not the end of the road," he said.
