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Iraq weighing options after Blackwater guards cleared
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by snuffysmith | January 5, 2010 at 08:24 am
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Baghdad and the US Government are weighing how to best react to decision which dismissed charges against American Blackwater guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians during an unprovoked attack in 2007, an Iraqi government spokesman said Monday.
The US court ruling dismissing criminal charges last week against the Blackwater guards on constitutional, technical grounds, sparked fury and protests in the war-torn country for what was seen as a culture of lawlessness and lack of accountability in the company's Iraqi operations.. An Iraqi investigation into the aftermath of the September 2007 killings had shown that the five guards were unquestionably responsible for the deaths of the civilians.
US Federal Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed the charges against the five, saying prosecutors violated their rights by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during a US State Department probe.
Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraq's options were limited by the US legal system and a bilateral agreement between Baghdad and Washington.
"The US government is studying two possibilities," Dabbagh told state-funded Al-Iraqiya television channel.
"The first is to appeal the decision, and the second is to open another case with new evidence and testimony from an Iraqi investigation."
Dabbagh's comments refute a statement made just hours earlier by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that Iraq had already filed a lawsuit against Blackwater, which has since renamed itself Xe, in a US court and would soon file another in Iraq.
Dabbagh added the Iraqi government could also provide help to victims of the violence and their families so that they could file their own civil or criminal case against Blackwater in a US court.
Maliki earlier told reporters in the holy Shiite shrine city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, that Iraq had "formed a committee and filed a case against Blackwater in the United States and will file one here in Iraq."
Dabbagh said, however, that no case had been filed in the US, and added it would not be possible for one to be tried in an Iraqi court because the incident had occurred before a bilateral security agreement between Washington and Baghdad lifted private security companies' immunity from prosecution.
Blackwater pulled out of Iraq in May, after the US State Department refused to renew its contracts.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 13:35 on January 5th, 2010
Disgusting at the start, and still disgusting, if America uses thugs in it's operations abroad, it should be as accountable for them as it should be for their armed forces.
This whole episode makes a mockery of the staue standing on it's coast. Or is that just for Americans? Because that's the way it's starting to look to the rest of the world.
at 18:54 on January 5th, 2010
Maliki Vows Punishment for Blackwater Guards - Associated Press. The Iraqi prime minister vowed Monday to seek punishment for the Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 people at a busy Baghdad intersection after U.S. courts dropped the case in a decision that outraged many Iraqis. Nouri al-Maliki's comments were his first public reaction since a U.S. judge threw out the case against the five Blackwater guards last week. The guards were accused of an unprovoked attack that left 17 dead. The killings inflamed anti-American sentiment and solidified many Iraqis' image of U.S. security contractors as above the law. "We have done what is necessary to protect our citizens and to punish those who committed the crime and we have formed committees and filed a lawsuit against Blackwater security firm either in America or Iraq. We won't abandon our right to punish this firm," Mr. al-Maliki said. The prime minister spoke during a visit to the southern city of Najaf to meet with the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is considered the most influential Shiite cleric in the country. Blackwater had been hired by the State Department to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said they were ambushed but U.S. prosecutors and many Iraqis said the Blackwater guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.
at 10:38 on January 12th, 2010
Most Iraq families of Blackwater victims accept settlement
Baghdad (AFP) Jan 10, 2010 - All but one of the families of 17 Iraqis killed in a 2007 shooting by US security guards have accepted compensation from the Blackwater firm, a lawyer wounded in the attack said on Sunday. Confirmation of the payouts comes less than two weeks after a US federal judge dismissed charges against five guards of the American private security firm accused of killing the civilians in an unprovoked ... more