Blackwater Baghdad shootings
 The burnt-out car in Baghdad and photos of the accused guards Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Nick Slatten, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball.
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Coordinates: 33°18′08″N 44°21′23″E / 33.30222°N 44.35639°E
On September 16, 2007, employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (since renamed Academi), a private military company, shot at Iraqi civilians killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad while escorting a US embassy convoy. The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States. In 2014, four Blackwater employees were tried and convicted in U.S. federal court; one of murder, and the other three of manslaughter and firearms charges.
Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. The Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul stated that the killings were unprovoked. The next day, Blackwater Worldwide's license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked. The US State Department has said that "innocent life was lost" and according to the Washington Post, a military report appeared to corroborate "the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault." The Iraqi government vowed to punish Blackwater. The incident sparked at least five investigations, including one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause.
In December 2008, the U.S. charged five Blackwater guards with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and a weapons violation but on December 31, 2009, a U.S. district judge dismissed all charges on the grounds that the case against the Blackwater guards had been improperly built on testimony given in exchange for immunity. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal. In April 2011 a US federal appeals court reinstated the manslaughter charges against Paul A. Slough, Evan S. Liberty, Dustin L. Heard and Donald W. Ball after closed-door testimony. The court said “We find that the district court’s findings depend on an erroneous view of the law,” A fifth guard had his charges dismissed, and a sixth guard (Jeremy Ridgeway) pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter. On January 6, 2012, Blackwater settled a lawsuit filed on behalf of six of the victims for an undisclosed sum. On October 22, 2014, a Federal District Court jury convicted Nick Slatten of first-degree murder, and three other guards (Slough, Liberty and Heard) guilty of all three counts of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to commit a violent crime. On April 13, 2015, Slatten was sentenced to life in prison, while the other three guards were sentenced to 30 years in prison.
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