US Judge Dismisses All Charges in Blackwater Iraq Killings

WASHINGTON — A federal judge dismissed all charges Thursday against security contractors from the former Blackwater in connection with the 2007 deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad square, ruling that prosecutors wrongly used against the men statements that they had given under duress.

In 2007, an Iraqi traffic police officer inspected a destroyed car in Nusoor Square Square in Baghdad, where Blackwater guards killed 17 people in an incident that stirred outrage among Iraqis.

The September 2007 incident led Iraq’s government to slap limits on security contractors hired by Blackwater, now known as Xe, and other firms. 

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina found that the government’s case was built largely on “statements compelled under a threat of job loss in a subsequent criminal prosecution,” a violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“In their zeal to bring charges against the defendant in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation,” Urbina wrote in a 90-page decision.

Federal prosecutors “repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors assigned to the case” in doing so, he found.

There was no immediate response to the decision from the Justice Department, which can appeal Thursday’s ruling or seek new indictments against the men.

The Blackwater guards were part of a State Department convoy moving through western Baghdad’s Nusoor Square when the shooting began. The company said its contractors came under attack, but Iraqi authorities called the gunfire unprovoked and indiscriminate.

A federal grand jury in Washington indicted five of the guards on manslaughter and weapons charges in December 2008. Prosecutors requested that charges against one of those men be dropped in November. Thursday’s ruling dismisses the counts against all five.

A sixth guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty in 2008 to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.

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