Blackwater Worldwide guards faces mandatory prison sentences under aggressive anti-drug law
US mulls unusual tactic as Blackwater charges loom. News from WASHINGTON – Blackwater Worldwide guards involved in the deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting of Iraqi civilians could face mandatory 30-year prison sentences under an aggressive anti-drug law being considered as the Justice Department readies indictments, people close to the case said.
Charges could be announced as early as Monday for the shooting, which left 17 civilians dead and strained U.S. relations with the fledgling Iraqi government. Prosecutors have been reviewing a draft indictment and considering manslaughter and assault charges for weeks. A team of prosecutors returned to the grand jury room Thursday and called no witnesses.
Though drugs were not involved in the Blackwater shooting, the Justice Department is pondering the use of a law, passed at the height of the nation’s crack epidemic, to prosecute the guards. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 law calls for 30-year prison terms for using machine guns to commit violent crimes of any kind, whether drug-related or not.
The people who discussed the case did so on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose matters that are not yet public.
Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd declined to comment on the report.
Blackwater, the largest security contractor in Iraq, was thrust into the national spotlight after the Sept. 16, 2007, shooting. Its guards, all decorated military veterans hired to protect U.S. diplomats overseas, were responding to a car bombing when a shooting erupted in a crowded intersection.
The guards carried government-issued machine guns and drove heavily armored trucks equipped with turret guns.
Blackwater insists its convoy was ambushed by insurgents. Witnesses said the guards were unprovoked. When the shooting subsided, Nisoor Square was littered with dead bodies and blown-out cars. Weeks later, amid a growing furor over the shooting, the Justice Department dispatched FBI agents to Iraq to investigate.
The company is not a target in the case and Blackwater has cooperated with investigators.
“The company has consistently said that we do not believe the individuals acted unlawfully,” company spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said Thursday. “If it is determined that an individual acted improperly, Blackwater would support holding that person accountable.”
Prosecutors questioned dozens of witnesses in the case, including the father of a young boy killed in the shooting. The investigation has focused on between three and six guards who could face charges.
The 30-year minimum sentence was passed as part of a broad law passed in the final days of the Reagan administration. It created the position of drug czar and boosted penalties for violence and drug crimes.
“Our ultimate destination: a drug-free America,” President Reagan said in signing the law. “And now in the eleventh hour of this presidency, we give a new sword and shield to those whose daily business it is to eliminate from America’s streets and towns the scourge of illicit drugs.”
Regardless of the charges they bring, prosecutors will have a tough fight. The law is unclear on whether contractors can be charged in the U.S., or anywhere, for crimes committed overseas. An indictment would send the message that the Justice Department believes contractors do not operate with legal impunity in war zones.
To prosecute, authorities must argue that the guards can be charged under a law meant to cover soldiers and military contractors. Since Blackwater works for the State Department, not the military, it’s unclear whether that law applies to its guards.
It would be the first such case of its kind. The Justice Department recently lost a similar case against former Marine Jose Luis Nazario Jr., who was charged in Riverside, Calif., with killing four unarmed Iraqi detainees.
Further complicating the case, the State Department promised several Blackwater guards limited immunity in exchange for their sworn statements shortly after the shooting. Prosecutors will need to show that they did not rely on those statements in building their case.
The following are just comments, not from this author. Please leave your views afterwards:
This is what happens when you hire a private army to do your fighting. It’s just a matter of time before these private armies turn on or are used against Americans – mark my words.
Indeed, a crime against innocent civilians. But, this appears to be an attempt by U.S. prosecutors to implement U.S. “Sharia” Law on subjects not actually under U.S. authority. Stretching our laws too far risks the possibility of setting the perpetrators free.
This can be handled properly, and maintain our respect with our allies; this is most important, at this time. Ya think?
Why isn’t our Army good enough to protect diplomats, and members of the state department?
If you’ve never been under fire you should keep your mouths shut. You want somebody else to do your dirty work for you and then you take a dump on them if they don’t wrap it in pretty paper and put a bow on it. Man, I hated communists even before they changed their name to liberals.
How’s come our media fails to report how many casualties Blackwater has had over there? Oh I forgot, the American Media thinks any military or law enforcement guy is trash and the fact that the terrorist scum hide behind women and children who might get shot, means nothing to this drive-by media!Come on folks. This is not a major issue at this point. This is a sidestep to an enormous error/illegality/abuse of power.
We all are aware of Blackwater’s behavior in Iraq. Actually we don’t really have a clue of what they did in Iraq. What we KNOW should appaul us all. How do we even start to hold people accountable when George Bush and Dick Cheney are about to skip on this entire travesty. We’ve got one little guard from Abu Graib and that’s just about it. What a joke in the name of JUSTICE. My God the journalists spent more time locked up than anyone.
Don’t let Bush pardon everyone involved! Impeach Bush and Cheney then worry about Blackwater
Here’s a thought-provoking argument.
If the Blackwater guards are decorated veterans, and they are just murderers, then I wonder how the rest of the military, most of them not decorated do.
The sad part is, all the poor countries who no means to protect themselves from this onslaught of the “Coalition of the Willing” are suffering from the doings of these murderers, whose job is to kill.
The world is sad. The poor are getting killed everywhere at the hands of the big and powerful. No one is strong enough to bring those powerful criminals, like Bush, to justice. IF there exists a God, may that God do the justice.
Funny,the wacko right always whines about the “Culture of Life” – yet when Iraqi civilians are slaughtered by a bunch of armed cowards they forget the value of “Life” – Blackwater thugs should be tried as adults, even though they are just scared little boys playing “army”!
This entire scheme of contracting out the responsibility and conduct of a war is flawed and is bound to get us as a country in trouble. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and that whole neocon crowd wanted to run a war on the sly. Now, they’re about to go off the radar and the culpability will rest not on their shoulders, as it should, but on ours. I doubt that many Americans would stand idly by while some hired guns went out and killed people in our name. At that rate, we would have done just as well to have hired Al Capone’s gang to police Chicago instead of creating the FBI.
well ,since these thugs were decorated for previous crimes ,it will be easy to prove these were trigger happy criminals thus 30 years in prison will not bring back the lives they took nor happiness to the families of those horrendously killed by what is considered experts on managing stressful and weapon related encounters but the degree of the bloodbath they perpetrated should be punished with the electric chair or the hanging although I would prefer them to be impaled so future trigger happy criminal think before they execute.
So let me get this strait. The US Justice Department is going to charge US citizens, hired by the US government, for the illegal use of automatic weapons issued by the US government?! HA HA! That’s dumber than bailing out the auto industry. It will, however, ensure a dismissal for the charged Blackwater employees.
This is the largest load of crap I think I’ve ever heard!!! The US Government hires these guys and then takes a big crap on them for doing their jobs in the middle of hell. They’ve been doing this for years to their own military men. I’m not surprised, but it sure looks like a stretch to prosecute under this crackhead law! They’re trying to drum up something against these honorable men to appease the Iraqis. I hope it backfires on the DOD somehow. Rat finks.
Liberals IMO. Blackwater was protecting high end dignitaries to include Iraqi ones. When ANYONE shoots at you, throws rocks, or w/e, you best damn well shoot back. Its a dog eat dog world out there in the Middle East and its either you do what your instincts tell you do to, or you and your people die. How soon you arm chair politicians forget that. How soon we as Americans forget that if we didn’t have Blackwater there, that the military would be strung out even more so that what they already are. I applaude BW for what they do and even though sometimes sheet goes wrong,… Oh well its war, sheet happens and you just have to deal with it, not go a witch hunt for the people who just happen to be in the crossfire. I dont want anyone no matter who you are to be killed.
Bottom line its wars, regardless of who you are, too bad we are there and have to put up with this sheet, but the sad truth is that there will and always will be casualties of war.
Private armies or paid mercs, whatever you want to call them, must be held accountable for any and all of their actions. I personally don’t think that private armies should be allowed in combat areas anymore. Private armies should have to comply by the same code of conduct and rules as a any regular US army personal does.
how in the hell can we use a machine gun law to prosacute them when the arms were issued by the U.S. to help keep the American politations safe over there; if this is the way we are going to fight this war we need to get out and let the people over there just kill each other. Shut down our borders and if there is a illeagle here we should imprison them and go on with our lives like every other country does. Or stand up for what we belive in and let or guys do there job and free a country. If we are going to start pulling CRAP like this it won’t be long before we are actually in a form of communism and no longer free.
What’s so unusual about charging someone for violating an applicable U.S. law? Besides, can one surmise that a pardon by the outgoing president may well preclude further proceedings?
They say they will give immunity, but will not trust the statements. If they do not trust the statements, then they will not give immunity. So much for politics.
it boggels the mind that we hire merceneries to fight the iraq war it’s subversive to the people of iraq the reason we have soldiers is to represent a nation and it’s ideals good or bad but a merc just represents money but i guess that’s the American way.
Our soldiers are in the news every day for the same crap; murder, rape, and war crimes and no one likes it. I’d rather these guys take care of this mess than deploying thousands of troops for a cause no one wants to fight. Make up your minds and quit crying…
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