Keeping in mind that there is a natural antagonism between troops and hired mercanaries ( the Blackwater folks are getting paid a LOT more )if that is true they should be prosecuted
The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which has played a key role in several high-profile cases against the Bush administration involving detainee policies and warrantless wiretapping, has just announced a suit against Blackwater USA.
The group is representing an injured survivor and the families of three killed during the controversial shootings last month:
Blackwater USA, the private military contractor whose heavily armed personnel allegedly opened fire on innocent Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square in Baghdad on Sept. 16, was sued today by an injured survivor and three families of men killed in the incident, according to the legal team representing the civilians. The case was brought be the Center for Constitutional Rights and the firms of Burke O'Neil LLC and Akeel & Valentine, P.C.
Filed in Washington, D.C. federal court by Talib Mutlaq Deewan and the estates of the deceased men - Himoud Saed Atban, Usama Fadhil Abbass, and Oday Ismail Ibraheem - the lawsuit alleges that Blackwater and its affiliated companies violated U.S. law and "created and fostered a culture of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company's financial interests at the expense of innocent human life."
The complaint alleges that Blackwater violated the federal Alien Tort Statute in committing extrajudicial killing and war crimes, and that Blackwater should be liable for claims of assault and battery, wrongful death, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and negligent hiring, training and supervision.
Blackwater guards were not under fire, eyewitnesses say
Kurds dispute firm's report of armed insurgents
The Boston Globe By James Glanz, New York Times News Service | October 13, 2007 BAGHDAD - Fresh accounts of the Blackwater shooting last month, given by three rooftop witnesses and by US soldiers who arrived shortly after the gunfire ended, cast new doubt yesterday on statements by Blackwater guards that they were responding to armed insurgents when Iraqi investigators say 17 Iraqis were killed at a Baghdad intersection last week.
The three witnesses, Kurds on a rooftop overlooking the scene, said they observed no gunfire that could have provoked the shooting by Blackwater guards, and US soldiers who arrived minutes later found shell casings from guns normally used by American contractors, as well as the US military.
The Kurdish witnesses are important because they had the advantage of an unobstructed view and because they said they observed the shooting at Nisoor Square from start to finish, free from the terror and confusion that might have clouded accounts of witnesses at street level.
Moreover, because they are pro-American, their accounts have a credibility not always extended to Iraqi Arabs, who have been more hostile to the US presence.
Their statements, made in interviews with The New York Times, appeared to challenge a State Department account that a Blackwater vehicle had been disabled in the shooting and had to be towed away.
Since those initial accounts, Blackwater and the State Department have consistently refused to comment on the substance of the case.
The Kurdish witnesses said that they observed no one firing at the guards at any time during the event, an observation corroborated by the forensic evidence of the shell casings. Two of the witnesses also said all the Blackwater vehicles involved in the shooting were driven away under their own power.
The Kurds, who work for a political party whose building looks directly down on the square, said they had looked for evidence that the American security guards were responding to an attack, but found none.
"I call it a massacre," said Omar H. Waso, one of the witnesses and a senior official of the party, which is called the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "It is illegal. They used the law of the jungle."
Many of the US soldiers were similarly appalled.
While Blackwater has said its guards were attacked by automatic gunfire, the soldiers did not find any casings from the sort of guns typically used by insurgents or by Iraqi security forces, according to a US military official briefed on the findings of the unit that arrived at the scene about 20 minutes after the Blackwater convoy left. That analysis of forensic evidence was first reported yesterday by The Washington Post.
The US military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, added that soldiers found clear evidence that the Blackwater guards had not been threatened and had also opened fire on civilians who tried to flee the scene.
"The cartridges and casings we found were all associated with coalition forces and contractors," he said. "The only brass we found where somebody fired weapons were ones from contractors."
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