Gunmen Take Hundreds of Students Hostage on Iraq University Campus BREAKING NEWS MUST SEE
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Gunmen Take Hundreds of Students Hostage on Iraq University Campus BREAKING NEWS MUST SEE - Video
25 BILLION FOR IRAQ (WAS IT WORTH IT)
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By: OUTTA FOCUS
A yearslong legal fight over a deadly shooting of civilians in an Iraq war zone reaches its reckoning point with the sentencing this week of four former Blackwater security guards.
Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty and Paul Slough face mandatory, decadeslong sentences because of firearms convictions. A fourth defendant, Nicholas Slatten, faces life in prison after being found guilty of first-degree murder.
At the hearing Monday in U.S. District Court, defense lawyers intend to appeal for mercy by arguing that their clients acted in self-defense during a chaotic firefight in Baghdad. They also plan to argue that sending the defendants to prison for decades would be an unfairly harsh outcome for men who have close family ties and proud military careers, and who were operating in stressful conditions in a war-torn country.
The men were charged in the deaths of 14 Iraqis at a crowded traffic circle in downtown Baghdad, killings that caused an international uproar and became a dark episode of contractor violence during the Iraq war. Defense lawyers argued that the contractors, who arrived there after a car bomb exploded, were targeted with gunfire from insurgents and Iraqi police, and shot back in self-defense. Prosecutors contended that there was no incoming fire and that the shooting was unprovoked.
The defendants who were in Iraq to protect American diplomats were convicted in October after a trial that stretched months and featured testimony from Iraqi witnesses and from other Blackwater guards who cooperated with the government.
The sentencing hearing arrives with much at stake for the men given the heavy punishments the government is seeking. The firearms convictions alone carry mandatory minimum sentences of 30 years in prison. But prosecutors are seeking sentences far beyond that, partly because they say the men have never shown remorse or accepted responsibility. The murder conviction against Slatten carries a life sentence.
"By imposing substantial sentences, this court would hold the defendants accountable for their callous, wanton and deadly conduct, and deter others wielding the awesome power over life or death from perpetrating similar atrocities in the future," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Defense lawyers say the mandatory minimums in this case violate a constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
"The defendants in this case did not have the option to 'leave their guns at home.' They were required to carry their government-issued weapons in order to do their job in a war zone," they wrote in court filings.
The lawyers said they were "aware of no other case in which the government has prosecuted government security contractors for conduct undertaken in self-defense in a war zone, much less for having used weaponry of a particular magnitude, when the weaponry was issued by the United States government for official use."
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Reckoning Point: Ex-US Guards Face Sentencing in Iraq Case
The Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters has left Iraq after he was threatened and denounced by a Shia paramilitary group's satellite news channel.
It came in reaction to a Reuters report last week that detailed lynching and looting in the city of Tikrit.
The threats against journalist Ned Parker began on an Iraqi Facebook page run by a group that calls itself "the Hammer" and is believed by an Iraqi security source to be linked to armed Shia groups.
The 5 April post and subsequent comments demanded he be expelled from Iraq.
One commentator said that killing Mr Parker was "the best way to silence him, not kick him out."
Three days later, a news show on Al-Ahd, a television station owned by Iranian-backed armed group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, broadcast a segment on Mr Parker that included a photo of him.
The segment accused the reporter and Reuters of denigrating Iraq and its government-backed forces, and called on viewers to demand Mr Parker be expelled.
The pressure followed a3 April report by Mr Parker and two colleagues detailing human rights abuses in Tikrit,after government forces and Iranian-backed militias liberated the city from the Islamic State extremist group.
Two Reuters journalists in the city witnessed the lynching of an Islamic State fighter by Iraqi federal police.
The report also described widespread incidents of looting and arson in the city, which local politicians blamed on Iranian-backed militias.
Trapped in Iraq Between the Islamic State and Government Forces
Days before the US launched airstrikes on Tikrit in late March, VICE News traveled to the front lines of the northern Iraqi city, where Iraqi government forces and volunteer militiamen are...
By: VICE News
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Trapped in Iraq Between the Islamic State and Government Forces - Video