Blackwater shootings resurrected with new case details surfaced as the Justice Department filed in court on Friday.
The Justice Department prosecutors have stated that they must be allowed to introduce relevant evidence that could possibly establish the motivation of the defendants during the 2007 Blackwater shootings in Nisuor Square of Baghdad.
"This evidence tends to establish that the defendants fired at innocent Iraqis not because they actually believed that they were in imminent danger of serious bodily injury. ... but rather that they unreasonably and recklessly fired at innocent Iraqi civilians because of their low regard for and hostility toward Iraqis," the filing said as reported in abc news.
In addition to the court filing on Friday, one of the Blackwater guards, Nicholas Slatten said that he wanted to kill many Iraqis as he can as payback for the 9/11 incident in the U.S. The filing also said that he even boasted about how many Iraqis he has shot which includes a woman who had a knife in her hand, and that the said incident occurred when he was still in the military.
The Blackwater shootings involved the Blackwater guards namely Donald Ball, a former Marine from West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard, a former Marine from Knoxville, Tennessee; Evan Liberty, a former Marine from Rochester, New Hampshire; Nick Slatten, a former Army sergeant from Sparta, Tennessee, and Paul Slough, an Army veteran from Keller, Texas.
The guards were accused of opening fire in the Nisour Square, Baghdad on September 16, 2007. Blackwater shootings incident has killed seventeen innocent Iraqi civilians. The Blackwater guards claimed that they fired in response to the attackers to defend the convoy. The guards were hired to clear the way for a convoy of the US State Department vehicles carrying diplomats for a meeting with officials of the US' Agency for International Development.
Blackwater shooting incident has resulted the outrage of many Iraqis thus contributing to a restrained relationship between the governments of Iraq and Washington. The schedule for the upcoming trial is said to take place this June.
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