Federal Prosecutors Say Blackwater ‘Specifically Intended to Kill’ Civilians
From The Intelligence Daily
The US government’s allegations back-up the explosive testimony of two former Blackwater employees. Gov’t says Blackwater shot Iraqis as “payback for 9/11”
A month ago, most major, corporate media outlets ignored the sworn statements of two former Blackwater employees, one of whom—identified in court papers as John Doe #2— alleged that the company’s owner Erik Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.” Most media outlets ignored the numerous, specific allegations contained in the sworn affidavit of John Doe #1 about Blackwater operatives shooting at defenseless civilians—most of them based on John Doe #1’s personal experience working in Iraq for Blackwater.
Now, it is not just former employees making these allegations.
On September 7, federal prosecutors in Washington DC submitted papers in the criminal case against five Blackwater operatives for their alleged role in the 2007 Nisour Square shooting in Baghdad that killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded more than 20 others. Blackwater forces “fired at innocent Iraqis not because they actually believed that they were in imminent danger of serious bodily injury and actually believed that they had no alternative to the use of deadly force, but rather that they fired at innocent Iraqi civilians because of their hostility toward Iraqis and their grave indifference to the harm that their actions would cause,” the acting US Attorney in DC, Channing Phillips, alleges in court papers submitted by Kenneth C. Kohl, the lead prosecutor on this case. “[T]he defendants specifically intended to kill or seriously injure the Iraqi civilians that they fired upon at Nisur Square.”
The allegation that stands out most in the court filing, as Mother Jones noted, is this one against one of the Nisour Square defendants:
During the twelve months proceeding the events charged in the indictment, while assigned to the Raven 23 convoy operating at various locations in the Red Zone in Baghdad, Iraq, defendant Nicholas Slatten made statements that he wanted to kill as many Iraqis as he could as “payback for 9/11,” and he repeatedly boasted about the number of Iraqis he had shot… [During these 12 months,] Slatten deliberately fired his weapon to draw out return fire and instigate gun battles in a manner that was inconsistent with the use of force and escalation of force policies that governed Blackwater personnel in Iraq.
