These files contain motions, declarations and complaints, forming part of a lawsuit filed against the US mercenary firm Blackwater for war crimes, wrongful death, summary exectuion, and other matters. It is a public record, but currently only available for a fee from PACER.
There is an outstanding motion to seal two exhibits by anonymous Blackwater employees which contain reports about the company's allegedly illegal actions.
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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.''
Attorneysfor the former Blackwater company denied the allegations at the hearing, which was called to consider their motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Ellis said he would issue a ruling "promptly.''
The hearing -- combative in its words but respectful in tone -- was the latest fallout from Blackwater's controversial actions in Iraq. The North Carolina company, which has provided security under a lucrative State Department contract, has come under scrutiny for a string of incidents in which its heavily armed guards were accused of using excessive force.
The deadliest was a September 2007 shooting in central Baghdad in which Blackwater guards opened fire on Iraqis in a crowded street, killing 17 civilians. The company has said the guards' convoy came under fire. Five former Blackwater guards have been indicted on federal charges in 14 of those shootings. A sixth guard pleaded guilty.
The lawsuit cites that incident and other shootings to accuse the company of "lawless behavior." A consolidation of five earlier lawsuits, it says the company covered up killings and hired known mercenaries. In sworn affidavits recently filed by the plaintiffs' attorneys, two anonymous former Blackwater employees also say -- without citing evidence -- that the company may have conspired to murder witnesses in the criminal probe.
Attorneys for Blackwater say the lawsuit should be dismissed on a variety of legal grounds and that although the deaths were tragic, the guards were closely supervised by U.S. government officials. The allegations "go far beyond describing the harm allegedly suffered by Plaintiffs,'' the Blackwater attorneys wrote in their motion to dismiss. "They include an encyclopedia of vituperative assertions.''
The Blackwater attorneys are also calling on the judge to strike the affidavits from the former employees from the court record, calling them "scandalous and baseless" and designed to get publicity. Ellis has yet to rule on that motion.
The largest single war crime of the recent Iraq War was probably the massacre at Fallujah.
It was a medieval act of bloodletting, using white phosphorus instead of burning oil.
For several days the besieging army effectively offered "no quarter" to the people inside Falluhah.
Why was Fallujah razed, and its inhabitants slaughtered and mutilated?
In revenge for the klling of four Blackwater dogs of war.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Did Blackwater mercenaries murder Iraqis to satiate their thirst for 9/11 revenge?
According to Department of Justice files, at least one did, noted Mother Jones associate editor Daniel Schulman on Tuesday morning.
The revelation was torn from documents relative to the prosecution of Blackwater Worldwide guards involved in a 2007 Baghdad massacre that left 17 dead.
According to the documents Schulman pulled, guards “routinely acted in disregard of the use of force policies,” and one, known as “Raven 23,” allegedly bragged that disregard for Iraqi lives stemmed from a desire for revenge after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. While Bush administration officials eventually admitted this, in the run-up to invasion they repeatedly implied that the middle eastern nation was loosely connected to the attacks.
A key passage excerpted from the filings reads:
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 and actually believed that they had no alternative to the use of deadly force, but rather that they fired at innocent Iraqi civilians because of their hostility toward Iraqis and their grave indifference to the harm that their actions would cause.
Mother Jones has posted the court records online (PDF link).
Controversy has surrounded the private security firm practically since it was founded, but erupted anew recently when former employees accused Blackwater’s founder and former CEO of murdering or facilitating the murders of other employees who were preparing to blow the whistle on his alleged criminal activities.
The sworn statements also say that founder Erik Prince and Blackwater executives were involved in illegal weapons smuggling and had, on numerous occasions, ordered incriminating documents, e-mails, photos and video destroyed. The former employees described Blackwater as “having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the ‘Blackwater Man Camp’ in exchange for one American dollar.” They add even though Prince frequently visited this camp, he “failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men.”
One of the statements also charges that “Prince’s North Carolina operations had an ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring, which was participated in by many of Mr. Prince’s top executives.”
The former employees additionally claim that Prince was engaged in illegal arms dealing, money laundering, and tax evasion, that he created “a web of companies in order to obscure wrong-doing, fraud, and other crimes,” and that Blackwater’s chief financial officer had “resigned … stating he was not willing to go to jail for Erik Prince.”
The company was also allegedly involved in the planning stages of the CIA’s assassination program, which was reportedly never used, then scrapped by CIA chief Leon Panetta.
Prince has repeatedly insisted his company has done nothing wrong and Blackwater continues to fulfill its contracts with the United States government.
For the massacre of Iraqi civilians, five Blackwater guards were arrested and charged with manslaughter. A sixth guard flipped and agreed to testify against the others. Government informants later claimed the company tried to gather up and destroy weapons involved in the slaughter.
The State Department announced last January that it would not be renewing Blackwater’s contract for security services in Iraq when it was set to expire in May, however the Obama administration decided to extend it through Sept. 3, according toThe Nation’s Jeremy Scahill.
ABC reported the new contract extension is for an unspecified amount of time and could end “within weeks or months.”
When it is finally allowed to expire, Blackwater’s involvement with Iraq will have ended, completely.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Of course, apart from Cheney and his neocon entourage, nobody accepted there was any link whatsoever between Iraq and 9/11.
If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. // If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. // If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. // If you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes truth. // If you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it.
Once people believe the Big Lie, they will slaughter men, women and children in its name.
And feel righteous in doing so.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
"One of the fables we live by is that some day the killing will stop.
If only we rid ourselves of Chinese, white men will have jobs and white women will have virtue, and then we can stop killing.
If only we rid ourselves of Indians, we will fulfill our Manifest Destiny, and then we can stop killing.
If only we rid ourselves of Canaanites, we will live in the Promised Land, and then we can stop killing.
If only we rid ourselves of Jews, we can build and maintain a Thousand Year Reich, and then we can stop killing.
If only we stop the Soviet Union, we can stop the killing (remember the Peace Dividend that never materialized?).
If only we can take out the worldwide terrorist network of bin Laden and others like him.
If only.
But the killing never stops. Always a new enemy to be hated is found."
— Derrick Jensen
It is the people who are "different" from us.... the brown skinned ones, those who pray to a different deity, those whose land, labor, resources we have used up (or desire unfettered), those who have something against their games of greed, fear, pillage, theft, fraud, corruption, pathology, murder, genocide, ecocide.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
September 14, 2009 [B] Blackwater involved in Bhutto and Hariri hits: former Pakistani army chief Tehran Times Political Desk
[/B] [B] [B] TEHRAN - Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg (ret.), has said the U.S. private security company Blackwater was directly involved in the assassinations of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. [/B][/B]
[B] Blackwater later changed its name and is now known as Xe.
General Beg recently told the Saudi Arabian daily Al Watan that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had given Blackwater the green light to carry out terrorist operations in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, and Quetta.
General Beg, who was chief of army staff during Benazir Bhutto’s first administration, said U.S. officials always kept the presence of Blackwater in Pakistan secret because they were afraid of possible attacks on the U.S. Embassy and its consulates in Pakistan.
During an interview with a Pakistani TV network last Sunday, Beg claimed that the United States killed Benazir Bhutto.
Beg stated that the former Pakistani prime minister was killed in an international conspiracy because she had decided to back out of the deal through which she had returned to the country after nine years in exile.
Beg also said he believes that the former director general of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence was not an accomplice in the conspiracy against Benazir Bhutto, although she did not trust him.
The retired Pakistani general also stated that Benazir Bhutto was a sharp politician but was not as prudent as her father.
On September 2, the U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, Anne W. Patterson, intervened with one of the largest newspaper groups in Pakistan, The News International, to force it to block a decade-old weekly column by Dr. Shireen Mazari scheduled for publication on September 3 in which Mazari, the former director of the Islamabad Institute of Strategic Studies, broke the story of Blackwater/Xe’s presence in Pakistan.
The management of The News International dismissed one of the country’s most prominent academics and journalists due to U.S. pressure. She joined the more independent daily The Nation last week as an editor.
On September 9, in her first column in The Nation, Dr. Mazari wrote:
“Now, even if one were to ignore the massive purchases of land by the U.S., the questionable manner in which the expansion of the U.S. Embassy is taking place and the threatening covert activities of the U.S. and its ‘partner in crime’ Blackwater; the unregistered comings and goings of U.S. personnel on chartered flights; we would still find it difficult to see the whole aid disbursement issue as anything other than a sign of U.S. gradual occupation. It is no wonder we have the term Af-Pak: Afghanistan they control through direct occupation loosely premised on a UN resolution; Pakistan they are occupying as a result of willingly ceded sovereignty by the past and present leadership.”
According to Al Watan, Washington even used Blackwater forces to protect its consulate in the city of Peshawar.
In addition, U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh has accused former U.S vice president Dick Cheney of being involved in the Hariri assassination.
He said Cheney was in charge of a secret team that was tasked with assassinating prominent political figures.
After the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005, the U.S. and a number of other countries pointed the finger at Syria, although conclusive evidence has never been presented proving Syrian involvement in the murder.
Ed Jewett Wrote:TEHRAN - Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg (ret.), has said the U.S. private security company Blackwater was directly involved in the assassinations of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Blackwater later changed its name and is now known as Xe.
I guess that would be Xe as in "Xe-cute" then...
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Manchurian Global assassinating key geopolitical targets? Shurely not... :fisheye:
British MSM is currently full of some diversionary stuff about Obama having snubbed Gordon Brown. However, the pieces contain some intriguing statements about a disagreement over the future focus of the mythical War On Terror.
My emphasis:
Quote:The White House and Gordon Brown today rushed to deny that the Anglo-American special relationship was in decay, with the prime minister saying he was working closer than ever before with Barack Obama "and the test of the relationship is what we do together".
Though neither side directly addressed reports that Brown had sought bilaterals with Obama on five occasions and had been rebuffed, they insisted that the working relationship between them was still good.
Brown also denied any suggestion that Britain was being excluded from the current high level US administration discussions on its future Afghan strategy, including the possibility that the focus will shift to a pursuit of al-Qaida in Pakistan, rather than a military surge in Afghanistan intended to isolate the Taliban and win hearts and minds.
Britain has been backing the concept of a surge, as the Afghan army is trained to take quicker control over security in the country.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Lovely idea for an emoticon, or a thread logo, or perhaps something else. Who knows a good graphic arist?
Maybe we should also do a "send-up" of the same idea and sell it as a patch or bumper sticker to raise more money for DPF's second anniversary.
Meanwhile:
Martial Law Is Their Business – and Business Sure Is Swell - "Hardin may well be the first of many economically devastated communities to be given a lifeline by the burgeoning military-homeland security-prison-industrial complex"
Blackwater Claims APF Illegally Using Logos, Material
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, October 1, 2009
A caller to the Alex Jones Show today said that he called Blackwater, who told him that American Police Force were illegally using their material and logos and that they were considering taking legal action against the paramilitary organization currently conducting law enforcement duties in Hardin, Montana.
Nearly 30 minutes of Peter Dale Scott in a video interview discussing the Hardin, Montana privatization of police, the source of the double-headed eagle logo, the G20 Pittsburgh protests and LRAD, COG, and more.
"... and I just don't see any opposition to it..."
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