Fourteen Killed – Nobody Punished

The five Blackwater employees charged with the Baghdad massacre that killed 14 will not be held responsible. The judge’s decision is just as disgraceful as the indictment.

The members of the Blackwater security team fired into a crowded Baghdad intersection for some 20 minutes on September 16, 2007. When the shooting stopped, at least 14 innocent Iraqi civilians lay dead. Nearly all the information that emerged since that bloody Baghdad incident indicates that a group of nervous Blackwater mercenaries fired indiscriminately at people and passing cars without having been attacked themselves.

It was the worst massacre ever caused by a private security company working for the United States government in Iraq.

But the crime will go unpunished, because a Washington judge dismissed the charges against the Blackwater employees involved. Prosecutors, the judge said, had improperly used testimony, given by the men, that was part of an immunity deal they had previously made. Their civil rights had, therefore, been ignored. The U.S. Justice Department could appeal that ruling, but experts believe the decision to be legally well-founded.

The judge’s decision is just as disgraceful as the indictment: Fourteen people were killed, and the indicted murderers get off on a legal technicality. An American statutory provision is more important than 14 dead Iraqis.

Blackwater, meanwhile, is doing brilliantly. The massacre turned out to be nothing more than a public relations problem that only temporarily put a damper on business. Blackwater has since changed its name to Xe Services and continues to earn millions of dollars from new U.S. government contracts.