RICO lawsuit against Blackwater dismissed.
On December 30, 2009, a federal judge dismissed criminal charges against five Blackwater guards involved in a shootout in Baghdad in September 2007 during which 14 Iraqis were killed.
US District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled that federal prosecutors improperly used statements the men gave to State Department investigators under a promise of immunity to secure indictments against them.
“In their zeal to bring charges…in this case, the prosecutors and investigators aggressively sought out statements the defendants had been compelled to make to government investigators in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and in the subsequent investigation,” Urbina wrote in a 90-page opinion.
“In so doing, the government’s trial team repeatedly disregarded the warnings of experienced, senior prosecutors, assigned to the case specifically to advise the trial team on [legal] issues, that this course of action threatened the viability of the prosecution. The government used the defendants’ compelled statements to guide its charging decisions, to formulate its theory of the case, to develop investigatory leads, and ultimately to obtain the indictment[s] in the case.”
At the time of the shooting, Blackwater had a contract to provide security to the State Department in Iraq.
