Prosecution of five Blackwater employees could be thrown out over immunized statements.
A US District Court judge has barred the public from attending -- or
the media from reporting on -- hearings in the trial of five Blackwater
employees charged over the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's
Nisoor Square in 2007.
A breaking story at the Washington Post reports that hearings to determine whether evidence against the accused was properly collected will be kept under wraps.
At issue are statements the State Department collected from
Blackwater immediately after the incident. In exchange for the
employees' co-operation, the State Department, then under the control
of the Bush administration, granted the Blackwater guards immunity from
prosecution over their statements.
The current case being pursued by the Justice Department is being
crafted so as to avoid using the immunized statements. But Judge Urbina
ordered hearings into whether those statements were used to gather
evidence after all. If it turns out they were, the judge will likely
throw out the case against the five Blackwater employees, the Post reports.
The Nisoor Square massacre took place on September 17, 2007, when
Blackwater guards escorting a State Department convoy through Baghdad
opened fire on civilians in Nisoor Square, in what is largely
considered an unprovoked act. Evidently the Blackwater guards started
firing when a civilian vehicle was spotted driving down the wrong side
of the road near the convoy.
The Post reports:
The five guards -- Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan
Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball -- are charged with voluntary
manslaughter and weapons violations in the killing of 14 civilians and
the wounding [of] 20 others. The Justice Department alleges that the
guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor
Square while in a convoy. One guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, has pleaded
guilty and is expected to testify against the others.
The proceedings underway in the District's federal court, known as
Kastigar hearings, will probe how well investigators gathered evidence
without being tainted by those immunized statements. If the judge finds
the government's case is tainted, he might be forced to throw out the
indictment.
The State Department canceled its Iraq security contract with
Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, shortly after President Obama's
inauguration. The Postreported at the time that the company had made $1.3 billion from contracts with the State Department.
Raw Story
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