Former Blackwater Guards Convicted in Iraq Shooting
From left: Paul A. Slough, Dustin L. Heard,
Nicholas A. Slatten and Evan S. Liberty.
Credit Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Four former Blackwater Worldwide security contractors were convicted Wednesday on charges stemming from a deadly 2007 shooting in Iraq.
Federal court jurors found one defendant guilty of murder and three others of manslaughter and weapons charges, roundly asserting that the shooting was criminal. The defendants showed little emotion as the lengthy verdict was read.
Seventeen Iraqis died when gunfire erupted on Sept. 16, 2007 in the crowded Nisour Square in Baghdad. The shooting inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad and helped solidify the notion that Blackwater, America’s largest security contractor in Iraq, was reckless and unaccountable.
The former contractors said that they were ambushed by insurgents and that civilian deaths were the unfortunate, unintended consequences of urban warfare.
The defendants were Blackwater guards. One of them, Nicholas A. Slatten, who the government said fired the first shots, was convicted of murder. The others — Dustin L. Heard, Evan S. Liberty and Paul A. Slough — were convicted on manslaughter and firearms charges.
Jurors in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia began deliberating on Sept. 2. They faced a complicated verdict form that ran 16 pages and required them to consider charges against each contractor for every victim. They asked few questions and offered no hints about their discussions.
The Nisour Square shooting, like the Abu Ghraib prison abuses and the massacre by Marines of 24 Iraqis in Haditha, was a low point in the Iraq war. Blackwater came to symbolize American recklessness abroad and became a flash point in the debate over whether the United States had become too reliant on contractors in war zones.
The shooting occurred when four Blackwater armored trucks responded to a car bombing. The Iraqis were killed when Blackwater contractors fired into the crowd using machine guns and grenade launchers.
Since then, Iraqis have been skeptical that a United States court would rule against Americans for shooting Iraqis. That suspicion grew as the case suffered repeated setbacks, often of the government’s own making, over many years.
There was evidence that State Department officials had gathered shell casings after the shooting to try to protect Blackwater. Then, State Department investigators gave the contractors limited immunity. In 2009, a judge threw out the charges, citing the Justice Department’s mishandling of evidence. An appeals court later reinstated the case.
The Iraqi government had wanted to prosecute the Blackwater contractors in Baghdad, but the American government would not allow it.
Manslaughter carries a sentence of up to 15 years per count, or up to eight years for involuntary manslaughter. The firearms charge carries a mandatory 30-year prison term. Murder carries up to life in prison.
The trial, which lasted more than two months, painted a gruesome picture of the shooting incident as several witnesses traveled from Iraq to testify.
An Iraqi traffic officer demonstrated for jurors how a woman had cradled her dead son’s head on her shoulder, shortly before her own death. A father sobbed uncontrollably as he testified about the death of his 9-year-old son. And witnesses from inside the Blackwater convoy described their former colleagues as firing recklessly.
“I’ve seen people completely unarmed, people doing nothing wrong, get shot,” Matthew Murphy, a former Blackwater contractor, testified. He called the Nisour Square shooting “the most horrible, botched thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
But the details of the shooting were heavily disputed. The defendants, backed up by some of the government’s own witnesses, said insurgents had attacked the convoy with AK-47s assault rifles. Several witnesses testified that they had seen or heard AK-47 fire. Radio logs showed that the convoy had reported incoming fire. A radiator line on a Blackwater truck was ruptured, and photos showed it pocked with what defense lawyers said were bullet holes.
The trial amounted to an epilogue in the story of Blackwater, a company whose fortunes grew with America’s war on terrorism. It began as a police- and military-training facility in rural North Carolina and became one of the country’s richest security contractors. It protected American diplomats, conducted clandestine raids alongside C.I.A. officers and loaded bombs on Predator drones.
But public outrage over the shooting, coupled with congressional hearings and a lengthy Justice Department investigation, ultimately led to the company’s demise. It lost its contracts and was renamed, sold and renamed again.