|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
January 23rd,
2010 - Biden Says US to Appeal Blackwater Court Decision News article from Agence France
Presse |
|
Biden Says US
to Appeal Blackwater Court Decision By Salam Faraj Agence France Presse January 23, 2010 Baghdad - Vice President Joe
Biden on Saturday announced an appeal into a US court decision to drop
charges against an American firm whose security guards are accused of killing
14 Iraqi civilians in 2007. "A dismissal is not an
acquittal," Biden told reporters during a visit to Baghdad, referring to
the case involving the five guards employed by the private company formerly
known as Blackwater. "Today I am announcing
that the United States government will appeal this decision. Our justice
department will file that appeal next week," he said. Iraq welcomed Biden's
remarks with Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari saying it was "good
news." "This is a very
important issue for the Iraqi people and the US government responded
positively to a request from the foreign ministry to appeal against the court
ruling, which is very good news," Zebari said. The five guards, who had
been part of a convoy of armoured vehicles, had been charged with killing the
civilians and wounding 18 others in an attack using guns and grenades at
Baghdad's busy Nisur square in September 2007. Charges against the
Blackwater employees were dismissed last year, when a judge ruled US
prosecutors violated their rights by using incriminating statements they had
made under immunity during a State Department probe. The ruling outraged the
Baghdad government which maintains that 17 people were killed. "The United States is
determined to hold to account anyone who commits crimes against Iraqi
people," Biden added. "While we fully respect
the independence and the integrity of the US judicial system, we were
disappointed with the judge's decision to dismiss the indictment which was
based on the way some evidence had been acquired." The Iraqi government said
this week it was considering lodging its own complaint against Blackwater,
which has since been renamed Xe, to seek compensation for the families of the
victims. In his ruling on December
31, US federal judge Ricardo Urbina found prosecutors violated the guards'
rights by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during
the US State Department probe. The decision was welcomed by
the US company, but several senators including 2008 Republican presidential
candidate John McCain have since voiced regret at the ruling and called for a
US government appeal. But the admissibility of the
Iraqi government complaint is uncertain because all of the families except
one agreed damages from Xe, according to a lawyer injured in the incident. The lawyer, Hassan Jabbar
Salman, said the families of those killed were offered 100,000 dollars and
those wounded received between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars from the US security
firm. Blackwater Worldwide changed
its name in February 2009, following what the company said was a change of
business focus. Critics however suggested
that the rebranding was an effort to polish an image tarnished by an alleged
culture of lawlessness and lack of accountability among Blackwater workers as
they carried out their duties in Iraq. Biden, President Barack
Obama's pointman on Iraq, arrived in Baghdad late on Friday. The main thrust of his visit
was to defuse a row over the banning of hundreds of candidates from a March 7
general election over their alleged links to executed dictator Saddam
Hussein. Copyright © 2010 AFP. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iH3LQK6I0tQSuKatdxAFfND3t2BA U.S. to Appeal Blackwater
Case Dismissal, Biden Says By Anthony Shadid New York Times January 23, 2010 Baghdad - Vice President
Joseph R. Biden Jr. promised Iraqi leaders on Saturday that the United States
would appeal the dismissal of manslaughter charges against five Blackwater
Worldwide security contractors involved in a deadly shooting here that has
inflamed anti-American tensions. Mr. Biden, tasked by the
Obama administration to oversee policy in Iraq, made the statement after a
day of meetings with Iraqi leaders that dealt, in part, with a political
crisis that has erupted over the March 7 parliamentary elections. American
officials view the vote, a barometer of the durability of Iraq’s political
system, as a crucial date in American plans to withdraw tens of thousands of
combat troops from Iraq by the end of August. The vice president expressed
his “personal regret” for the Blackwater shooting in 2007, in which
contractors guarding American diplomats opened fire in a crowded Baghdad
traffic circle, killing 17 people, including women and children. “A dismissal is not an
acquittal,” he said after meeting President Jalal Talabani. Investigators had concluded
that the guards fired indiscriminately on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked
and unjustified attack. The guards contended that they had been ambushed by
insurgents and fired in self-defense. In December, in a decision
that was a blow to the Justice Department and unleashed anger and disbelief
in Iraq, a federal judge threw out the five guards’ indictment on
manslaughter charges, citing misuse of their statements that violated their
constitutional rights. The judge’s scathing and detailed ruling was expected
to make any appeal difficult. “This is great news,”
Abdel-Amir Jihan, who was wounded in the shooting, said after hearing of Mr.
Biden’s announcement. “The court was not fair to us. We felt great injustice
when we heard the verdict. It was not right to drop the charges against
them.” Mr. Biden was scheduled to
leave Saturday evening after a 24-hour visit that involved meetings with most
of the pivotal players in the election crisis. That dispute erupted this
month after a government commission barred more than 500 candidates, accusing
them of supporting Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. While some leaders have
insisted that the disqualifications adhered to Iraqi law, many Sunni Muslims
have seen them as score-settling by religious Shiite parties who suffered
under Baath Party rule, and American officials have worried that the move
could impair the vote’s legitimacy. American officials have
warned Iraqi leaders to avoid a process that, in the words of Mr. Biden’s
national security adviser, Antony J. Blinken, “lacks transparency and
fairness and credibility.” But as expected, there was no breakthrough in the
meetings, and Mr. Biden, who spent the day shuttling between meetings,
stressed that the United States would not impose a solution. “I want to make clear I am
not here to resolve that issue,” he said. “I am confident that Iraq’s leaders
are seized with this issue and are working for a final, just solution.” Before his meeting with
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, though, Mr. Biden alluded to how
frequently American mediation - especially his own, over the course of three
trips here since he became vice president - has been necessary. He jokingly
told Mr. Maliki: “I’ve come to apply for citizenship. I’ve been here enough.” The crisis has proved
intractable in part because of its very nature: a legal process with obvious
and sweeping political effects, seized on by Iraqi leaders with competing
interests. In Mr. Biden’s meeting with
Mr. Maliki, officials said, the prime minister insisted that the
disqualifications were simply a legal issue. But Mr. Maliki’s critics have
accused him of politicizing the issue as much as anyone, and in a speech on
Friday, he took an especially hard line, saying that the barring of
candidates in itself did not go far enough. And while many of the most
senior Iraqi officials have warned the United States against interference in
Iraq’s affairs, others - especially many of the Sunni politicians who were
barred from running - have sought American intervention. American officials have said
that, despite the current political crisis, they do not foresee any delay in
this August’s withdrawal of the main body of American combat troops. A notable step in that
process happened Saturday when the Marine Corps handed over security duties
in Anbar Province, once a cradle of the insurgency, to United States Army
soldiers. The move formally ended the seven-year-long Marine presence in
Iraq, in effect signaling the end of heavy combat operations. As many as 25,000 Marines
were once in the country, and the remaining few thousand are expected to
leave within weeks. Copyright 2010 The New York
Times Company. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/world/middleeast/24iraq.html |