Blackwater Sentenced - Four former Blackwater guards have apparently been convicted for a 2007 bloody incident that left 14 Iraqi - identified as unarmed - civilians dead and 17 others badly wounded.
According to USA Today, a federal jury has found Wednesday that all four Blackwater guards were guilty of the fatal shooting that was carried out while their U.S. diplomatic convoy drove through Baghdad.
One of the convicted Blackwater ex-guards is Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, Tenn., who, as per court documents, fired the first shots in crowded Nisour Square. He was found guilty of first degree murder of civilians whose names were not released to the media.
When the first Blackwater guard is sentenced, he could face life imprisonment plus other decades in jail.
The other three guards are Paul Slough of Keller, Texas; Evan Liberty of Rochester, N.H., and Dustin Heard of Knoxville, Tenn. and all of them were convicted of "multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and firearms violations."
The verdict of the federal jury comes after almost six weeks of deliberations and a trial that in Washington, D.C. that lasted for 10 weeks.
"This verdict is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law, even in times of war," said U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen.
All four Blackwater ex-guards are already U.S. military veterans, but their September 2007 shootings enraged not only Iraqis but also the United States because it changed how U.S. contractors were used.
Blackwater is a private contractor founded by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince in 1997 that hire American security guards to protect U.S. diplomats, according to The Guardian.
Since its foundation, Blackwater grew rapidly to become a reliable contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan but it became notorious in some circles.
"The Blackwater contractors saw themselves as 'above the law' and actually believed that 'they ran the place,'" wrote a State Department official in an Aug. 31, 2007 memo that was publicly exposed amid the trial of the four ex-guards.
The company has since been booted out of Iraq and was asked to pay just compensations to the families of the dead and severely wounded civilians.
In 2008, the Blackwater guards that are yet to be sentenced claimed that their act of shooting the civilians was out of self-defense. At the time they were armed with machine guns, grenade launchers, rifles and pistols.
Their lawyers at the time argued that Slatten, Slough, Liberty and Heard should not be prosecuted because they were actually protecting State Department personnel.
"Seven years ago, these Blackwater contractors unleashed powerful sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers on innocent men, women and children," Machen quipped. "Today, they were held accountable for that outrageous attack and its devastating consequences for so many Iraqi families."
Throughout the reading of their multiple verdicts, all former Blackwater guard defendants didn't show any emotion even when Judge Royce Lamberth order that they should be taken into immediate custody, reports News Observer.
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