WaPo: Blackwater Founder Accused in Court of Intent to Kill

[mod mom]

Blackwater Founder Accused in Court of Intent to Kill


By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 29, 2009

The founder of Blackwater USA deliberately caused the deaths of innocent civilians in a series of shootings in Iraq, attorneys for Iraqis suing the security contractor told a federal judge Friday.

The attorneys singled out Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who is the company's owner, for blame in the deaths of more than 20 Iraqis between 2005 and 2007. Six former Blackwater guards were criminally charged in 14 of the shootings, and family members and victims' estates sued Prince, Blackwater (now called Xe Services LLC) and a group of related companies.

"The person responsible for these deaths is Mr. Prince,'' Susan L. Burke, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. "He had the intent, he provided the weapons, he provided the instructions, and they were done by his agents and they were war crimes.''

Judge T.S. Ellis III expressed deep skepticism about the claims. "Are you accusing Mr. Prince of saying 'I want our boys to go out and shoot innocent civilians?' '' he asked the attorneys."These are certainly allegations of not engaging in very nice conduct, but where are the elements that meet the elements of murder? I don't have any doubt that you can infer malice. What you can't infer, as far as I can tell, is intent to kill these people.''

-snip

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/28/AR2009082803782.html?hpid=topnews


ATTORNEYS FOR BLACKWATER SAY DISMISS PARTLY BECAUSE: " the guards were closely supervised by U.S. government officials" CHENEY?

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Erik was acting in the finest tradition of Republiconism. Smirk." - xCommander AWOL (R)

[SpiralHawk]

2. "On the bright side, Blackwater is making beaucoup profits." -xVP Five-Military-Deferments Cheney

"It is an uncontested FACT that Massive Profit is intensely beneficial for republicon fat cats. So, really, offing a bunch of Eye-rackis is totally inconseqential when measured against all the CashMoneyBucks that Erik & our Republicon Cronies were able to milk out of our Republicon Oil Crusade in the Middle East. Sneer."

- xVP Dickie 'Five-Military-Deferments' Cheney (R)

[RoccoR5955]

3. They should throw the book at him! n/t

[mod mom]

6. "Judge T.S. Ellis III expressed deep skepticism about the claims" doesn't sound good!

:mad:

Ellis was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on July 1, 1987, I don't know if that means anything.

[SpiralHawk]

4. Glad the corporate media is giving this some attention

Sheesh...

[laststeamtrain]

5. K & R--

Blackwater in Court Today in War Crimes Hearing

Will a war crimes lawsuit against Erik Prince and Blackwater be allowed to proceed? That is in the hands of a Reagan-appointed judge in Virginia.

By Jeremy Scahill

UPDATE: Judge TS Ellis III asked a lot of questions about the Alien Tort Statute’s applicability in the case during today’s hearing. He also asked both parties to submit briefs by Friday from Iraqi law experts on why the case can’t be tried in Baghdad vs. the USA. He said he will rule promptly once those briefs are filed. Also, the Department of Justice has until October 8 to decide if it is going to intervene on Blackwater’s behalf in this case (see below for context).

Lawyers for Blackwater and its owner Erik Prince are in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia today where they are arguing that the five lawsuits against them should be thrown out. The judge in the case, TS Ellis III, is a Reagan appointee with an interesting recent history. He presided over the plea agreement of John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban;” he sentenced Lawrence Franklin to 12 years in the AIPAC/Israel espionage scandal and he also tossed out a case brought by German citizen Khalid El-Masri against private companies allegedly involved with the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Judge Ellis said that to allow the case to proceed would “present a grave risk of injury to national security.” Blackwater has made a similar argument in this case, essentially that it was involved with sensitive operations on behalf of the government and cannot be sued (This is covered in great detail in my book).

Ellis has refused to grant Blackwater’s request for a gag order in the case, which Blackwater wanted. In my recent piece for The Nation, “Blackwater: CIA Assassins?” the second half of the story got buried because of breaking news. It dealt with Blackwater’s attempt to make the US government the defendant in these civil cases instead of Prince and Blackwater. For background, I am posting that section here: ... http://rebelreports.com/post/174064024/blackwater-in-court-today-in-war-crimes-hearing

[saltpoint]

7. No harm in a thorough investigation. Let's just look into a few of

the files on this.

And let's get a list -- soon -- of which U.S. government officials supervised the operations.