By Bobby Rajabi
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
BAGHDAD, Iraq – On January 4 Iraq has filed a lawsuit against Blackwater in a United States court. Another lawsuit will be filed against the US-based private security firm, according to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The charges come amid anger in Iraq over an American court dropping charges against five Blackwater guards. The guards were charged with killing fourteen Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked attack in September 2007.
According to Maliki, “the US Justice Departments has protested” the court’s ruling that the charges be dropped. Maliki also confirmed that Iraq had “formed a committee and filed a case against Blackwater in the United States and will file one here in Iraq.” Without providing elaboration, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said that Iraq had “started to take the necessary measures to bring Blackwater to justice.”
The guards charged in the original case were part of convoy of armored vehicles who were escorting a US State Department vehicle in a Sunni-controlled district in September 2007. They were charged with killing fourteen unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding eighteen others at a busy Baghdad roundabout using both guns and grenades. Iraq alleges that seventeen people were killed in the action. Blackwater claimed that the convoy was attacked by an explosive device and smalls are fire and the guards were acting in self-defense. Witnesses and victims, however, allege that the Blackwater employees shot indiscriminately.
A US federal judge, Ricardo Urbinia, dismissed the charges against the five Blackwater guards. Urbina concluded that prosecutors had violated the rights of the guards by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during a US State Department probe. The Iraqi government called this ruling “unacceptable and unjust.”
The immunity was lifted in a bilateral agreement that came into effect in 2009. It is not clear how an Iraqi case against the Blackwater guards or the company itself would get around the immunity that was valid at the time of the September 2007 incident.
Blackwater pulled out of Iraq in May 2009 after the United State State Department refused to renew its contracts. The company subsequently changed its name to Xe Services.
For more information, please see:
Al Jazeera – Iraq to Take Blackwater to Court – 5 January 2010
Daily Mail – Iraq Seeks Revenge in Court for the Blackwater Shootout – 5 January 2010
AFP – Iraq Files Case Against Blackwater: PM – 4 January 2010
Reuters – Iraq Will File Lawsuits Against Blackwater – 4 January 2010
