Blackwater trial

Some wonder if the US prosecutors that sued Blackwater and failed did not fail on purpose as they had been warned repeatedly by the US government that the way they were building their case was not legal.

Here is an Democracy Now interview with a lawyer:

Scott Horton: And specifically what they did is they took statements that were taken by the Department of State against a grant of immunity; that is, the government investigators told the guards, “Give us your statement, be candid, be complete, and we promise you we won’t use your statement for any criminal charges against you.” But the Justice Department prosecutors took those statements and in fact used them. They used them before the grand jury. They used them to build their entire case. And they did this notwithstanding warnings from senior lawyers in the Justice Department that this was improper and could lead to dismissal of the case. It almost looks like the Justice Department prosecutors here wanted to sabotage their own case. It was so outrageous.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that’s possible?

SCOTT HORTON: I think it is possible. Specifically in this case, there were briefings that occurred on Capitol Hill early on in which senior officials of the Justice Department told congressional investigators, staffers and congressmen that essentially they didn’t want to bring the case. In fact, one of the congressmen who was present at these briefings told me they were behaving like defense lawyers putting together a case to defend the Blackwater employees, not to prosecute them. And I think we see the evidence of that copiously in Judge Urbina’s opinion.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Jawad, talking about what happened to his wife and his son, as they were gunned down in Nisoor Square by the Blackwater operatives. Now the case against them has been dismissed. Scott Horton, can another case be brought against them?

SCOTT HORTON: Absolutely. In fact, this decision puts the US in breach of its treaty obligations to prosecute this case, which was an absolute international law obligation. Now, this case was being prosecuted in US court because of an order that was issued by the US occupation authorities that granted these people immunity from Iraqi criminal prosecution and accountability.

And I think the rule of international law is quite well settled. If the US cannot, for technical reasons—that’s this ruling here, it is purely technical, has nothing to do with the merits of the case—if the US cannot, for technical reasons, prosecute the case, the US is really obligated to waive the immunity under that order and surrender these individuals to the Iraqi authorities for prosecution, probably with an agreement as to what charges will be brought and an agreement that any prison term they were sentenced to could be served in the United States.

In addition to that, there’s also the possibility, that was alluded to in the setup here, for a civil action, and civil claims on behalf of the families of the victims are already pending in US courts. And the Iraqi government has now announced it’s going to directly support those claims.

SCOTT HORTON: Well, that’s right. In fact, I would note that one of the statements the Iraqi government made in response to this was that even though Blackwater was no longer formally a contractor in Iraq, they found that many of the Blackwater employees had simply recontracted with the new contractors there, so they were still in place. And the Iraqi government said that’s completely unacceptable.

Well, the problem is that the US has not changed its pattern of heavy reliance on private security contractors. If anything, we’re actually seeing that reliance increase in connection with the operations in Afghanistan. And in fact, there are only a handful of qualified and authorized service providers. So Blackwater, almost by definition, is going to continue to hold a large part of these contracts as they’re awarded, not with—this is notwithstanding promises that were made by Hillary Clinton, when she was running for president, to terminate the Blackwater contracts. I mean, now she is Secretary of State, and Blackwater is still the principal security contractor to the State Department.