Former guards with US security firm charged in Afghanistan

Charges come as Blackwater, now known as Xe, reaches compensation settlement over deaths of Iraqi civilians


Chris McGreal
guardian.co.uk
7 January 2010


Two former guards with the security company Blackwater have been charged in the US with the murder of Afghan civilians in a case likely to reinforce accusations that the firm ran a rogue militia that showed a reckless disregard for human life.

The charges follow the collapse of a case against five other Blackwater guards over killings in Iraq, and an agreement by the company today to pay compensation for a number of deaths of Iraqi civilians in several incidents.

Today's legal settlement amounts to an implicit admission by the highly secretive company that some of its guards were responsible for a series of unjustifiable killings.

Blackwater appears to have reached the deal to avoid a court hearing that threatened to force the company to lay bare what critics contend was a policy of shooting first, as well as the involvement of its employees in an array of criminal activities.

But the company's actions are likely to come under legal examination after all following the indictment of Justin Cannon, 27, and Chris Drotleff, 29, for murder and other offences after they opened fire on a car following a traffic accident in Kabul. Two people were killed and one wounded.

Cannon, from Texas, recently told the Associated Press that he is innocent.

"My conscience is clear about it, but that doesn't really matter," he said. "If someone's got an agenda, then there's nothing I can do about it."

Blackwater, which renamed itself Xe after a deluge of bad publicity over its actions in Iraq, did not release details of the settlement it reached today with Iraqi families in which the company was accused of a pattern of illegal activity and reckless killings. The legal actions accused Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince, a former member of US navy special forces, of running a private army that "roamed the streets of Baghdad killing innocent civilians".

Among the cases was the killing of three members of an Iraqi family, including a nine-year-old boy, when Blackwater guards opened fire on their car as they drove to Baghdad airport in July 2007.

Other lawsuits filed by the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York related to the killing of an Iraqi guard and the shooting dead of three people guarding the state-run Iraqi Media Network by a Blackwater sniper. The Iraqi police called the shootings an "act of terrorism".

The highest-profile case was on behalf of the families of three of up to 17 Iraqis killed by Blackwater guards in Baghdad's Nisoor square in 2007.

Five Blackwater guards were prosecuted in the US over the killings but last week a judge threw out the charges on procedural grounds, including that the accused men had been forced to incriminate themselves. The guards could not be prosecuted in Iraq because of an immunity agreement imposed by Washington on the interim administration in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion.

The decision has led to accusations that Blackwater was in effect operating outside the law, which contributed to a climate of impunity and reckless use of weapons. The company has since been barred from the country by the Iraqi government.

Critics allege that US officials contributed to the climate of impunity by protecting Blackwater guards responsible for evidently illegal killings. Those include the shooting dead three years ago of an Iraqi security guard to the country's vice-president while he was on duty at the prime minister's compound.

The Iraqi government alleges that the guard was shot by a drunken Blackwater employee who was then spirited out of the country by the US state department, which attempted to keep his identity secret.

The action settled today also included allegations that the company's aircraft were used to abduct Iraqis and that Blackwater workers were involved in weapons smuggling, illegal drug use and bringing young girls to the company's compound in Baghdad for paid sex.

Blackwater said it was "pleased" with the settlement, which it said "provides some compensation to Iraqi families".

Despite Blackwater's contentious record, the US military and intelligence agencies continue to maintain a close relationship with the company. Two of the CIA workers killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan this week were private contractors with Blackwater.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ja ... s-security