All charges dismissed in Blackwater shooting

By David G. Savage

Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON

Ruling in a case that strained U.S.-Iraqi relations, a federal judge in Washington on Thursday dismissed all criminal charges against five Blackwater security guards who were accused of firing machine guns at unarmed civilians driving through a Baghdad traffic circle, killing 17 of them and injuring 20 more.

The judge did not rule on the substance of the charges against the private security guards but instead decided that prosecutors had wrongly relied on what the guards told State Department investigators shortly after the incident. As government contractors, the employees of Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater were required to speak to an investigator after a shooting.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said the use of these statements violated the defendants’ rights against compelled self-incrimination.

“In their zeal to bring charges against the defendants … the government used (their) compelled statements to guide its charging decisions … and ultimately, to obtain the indictment in this case,” the judge wrote in a 90-page opinion. “We’re disappointed by the decision,” said Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. “We’re still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options.”

Because the indictment was thrown out on legal grounds, the government could bring an appeal.

The five guards in the case were Paul Slough of Keller, Texas; Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, Tenn.; Evan Liberty of Rochester, N.H.; Dustin Heard of Maryville, Tenn.; and Donald Ball of West Valley City, Utah. Each had been charged with multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter and firearms violations.

A sixth guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to one count of voluntary manslaughter and helped authorities confirm the details of the incident.

The guards maintained that they fired their weapons in response to an attack by insurgents. But according to the U.S. prosecutors and an Iraqi government investigation, the shooting was unprovoked.

The September 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square put a  spotlight on the role of private security guards in the Iraq war . Blackwater guards were hired to provide protection for U.S. officials, but they were not bound by all the same rules and procedures as the U.S. military.

Before the 2007 incident, Blackwater’s guards had been involved in other shootings, and they were faulted for firing at unarmed civilians.

The news of the dismissal came to Baghdad late Thursday night. One survivor, a cab driver named Bara Sadoun Ismail, who was shot twice in the incident, refused to accept the news.

“I don’t think it’s true that these five people have been released for lack of evidence,” he said. “The American justice (system) works. There is just delay.”

The five guards who were in Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007, said they were responding to reports of an explosive device detonating nearby as a convoy of U.S. officials approached the area.

The guards “were defending themselves and their comrades who were being shot at and receiving fire from Iraqis they believed to be enemy insurgents,”  defense attorney David Schertler said at the time of their indictment in December 2007.

Government prosecutors disputed that the guards were returning fire.

“None of the victims of this shooting was armed,”  Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. attorney in Washington, said when he announced the indictment. “None was an insurgent.”

The five guards were not charged with murder but instead with  voluntary manslaughter  and firearms offenses.

The judge convened a hearing in October to determine whether the indictment was “tainted” by the statements the guards had given during their initial interviews. The hearing stretched over three weeks.

He concluded Thursday that the “defendants’ compelled statements pervaded nearly every aspect of the government’s investigation and prosecution.” For that reason, the entire indictment must be dismissed, he said.

Separately, Blackwater and its founder, Erik Prince, have been sued in federal court by the victims of the Nisoor Square shootings.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the lawsuit, the complaint alleged that Blackwater and Prince “created and fostered a culture of lawlessness among its employees, encouraging them to act in the company’s financial interests at the expense of innocent human life.”

Blackwater, which has changed its name to Xe Services, is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed.