© Cliff Owen, AP Former Blackwater Worldwide guard Nicholas Slatten leaving federal court in Washington in June 2014. He was convicted Oct. ...
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| © Cliff Owen, AP Former Blackwater Worldwide guard Nicholas Slatten leaving federal court in Washington in June 2014. He was convicted Oct. 22, 2014, of murder in the 2007 shooting that killed 14 Iraqis in Baghdad. Three co-defendants were found guilty of manslaughter and other charges. |
By Michael Collins, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON
Nick Slatten’s last trial ended with him receiving a sentence of life in prison.
He’s hoping his next trial will set him free.
The former Blackwater Worldwide Security guard goes on trial Monday for the second time on a murder charge amid allegations that he instigated a mass shooting that killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounded 17 others, including women and children.
The shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square occurred in 2007 during the war between Iraq and a U.S.-led coalition.
Slatten’s conviction for first-degree murder was thrown out last August by a federal appeals court because he had not been allowed to introduce evidence raising doubts about whether he fired the opening shots. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia ordered that he be given a new trial.
Slatten, 34, who grew up in grew up in Sparta, Tenn., is incarcerated in Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, Va., just outside of Washington. He declined through a family friend to comment on his new trial.
But earlier this year, in interviews conducted by email with USA TODAY, Slatten insisted he was innocent and that the truth would eventually come out.
“I am a POW in my own country,” he said at the time.
Jury selection in Slatten’s new trial was set to begin Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington and is expected to continue for several days. Opening statements will follow. The trial is likely to run four to six weeks.
In a flurry of pretrial motions, Slatten’s attorneys asked that the case against him be dropped, that some evidence from the scene be barred from the trial and that the criminal proceedings be moved to Middle Tennessee, where Slatten was arrested.
They also have requested that the government produce intelligence files indicating whether any of the victims of the shooting or the Iraqi police officers who were present in Nisour Square that day or who may have participated in the subsequent investigation have any connection to terrorist groups.
Such evidence, if available, would cut into the heart of the government’s argument that the victims were civilians and could bolster Slatten’s defense that he and the other guards who opened fire feared that they were under attack.
Government attorneys declined Slatten’s requests for the intelligence files last month, but wrote that “we are not going to confirm or deny” whether such information exists.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth denied Slatten’s motion to release the intelligence records. Earlier, he denied Slatten's motions to dismiss the case and prohibit the introduction of certain evidence.
The deadly rampage in which Slatten and three other guards have been charged occurred more than a decade ago, but the details of what happened that day remain in dispute even after investigations by the military, a congressional panel, the FBI and others.
The guards – Slatten, Dustin Heard of Maryville, Tenn., Paul Slough of Keller, Texas, and Evan Liberty of Rochester, N.H.– were all former armed services members working as private security guards for Blackwater. The guards’ Raven 23 security team was under contract by the State Department.
On Sept. 16, 2007, their convoy traveled to a crowded traffic circle in downtown Baghdad as part of the effort to evacuate a U.S. diplomat.
At some point, the guards opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers. They say the shooting started only after a white Kia sedan lurched out of stopped traffic and approached their four armored vehicles. The men had received intelligence reports that a white Kia might be used as a car bomb, so they feared they were under attack.
No evidence of a bomb was ever found. But the shooting heightened tensions between Baghdad and Washington and raised questions about the U.S. government's use of private contractors during the war.
The government argued the guards opened fire without provocation on innocent Iraqis and used excessive force. Slatten, an expert marksman, fired the first shots, prosecutors say, killing the driver of the Kia, a young, unarmed Iraqi medical student. The student’s mother, a physician who was seated beside him in the car, also was killed.
But another one of Slatten’s co-defendants, whose name has not been made public, said in statements to investigators that he fired the first shot, not Slatten. The statements were never presented to the jury during Slatten’s trial.
In ordering a new trial for Slatten, the appeals court said last August that the government’s case against him “hinged on his having fired the first shots.” As a result, the court said, he should have been tried separately from the other guards so he could have called the unnamed guard as a witness.
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