Interviews with lawyers involved in the cases, outside legal experts and a review of some records show that federal prosecutors have failed to overcome a series of legal hurdles, including the difficulties of obtaining evidence in war zones, of gaining proper jurisdiction for prosecutions in American civilian courts, and of overcoming immunity deals given to defendants by American officials on the scene.
“The battlefield,” said Charles Rose, a professor at Stetson University College of Law in Florida, “is not a place that lends itself to the preservation of evidence.”
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This is very interesting and troubling from a legal standpoint. This will just add to the argument against this industry that we are above the law or immune from any wrong doing.
I am speaking for myself here, but I am sure others will echo the same sentiment. I do not view us as above the law or unaccountable, nor do I want to be looked at as ‘above the law or unaccountable’. I want us to be accountable, and the public that pays the taxes that is used by congress to contract our services in war zones must also be assured that we are accountable.
As it stands now, the government has yet to figure this stuff out and we continue to be demonized and discredited for our service in the war. That means the security contractors who died in the war, as well as the living will continue to be looked at as less than or illegitimate. That is why it is extremely important that a legal mechanism is established that actually works.
Now of course the justice system ran it’s course with the ruling of this individual who shot the Iraqi bodyguard. But if the DoJ can’t prosecute such a simple and clear cut case, then how does that translate with other similar cases?
I also want to hold the FBI to some accounting as well. If evidence in a war zone is needed, then send agents to that war zone and collect it. They can call upon military police in those jurisdictions to help. For the whole immunity deal, it needs to be made clear exactly who can give that kind of immunity and in what circumstance. This is where congress can intervene and dictate exactly how that is to be done.
Another point to make is on the big picture. Our enemy continues to be released from Gitmo because of a lack of ‘war zone evidence’ or whatever, and they go right back to the battlefield and kill more soldiers or innocents. I don’t agree with this legal policy as well. In both the contractor and terrorist cases, a lack of coherent legal mechanisms that everyone can agree upon is not good.
I also think that politics have certainly gotten in the way of forming and deciding upon coherent legal mechanisms. If one side thinks military tribunals is sufficient, and the other side thinks federal courts is better, and we continue to do the slow slog of debate and deliberation on determining the best way, well then the war time strategy will suffer and more people will die. Figure it out folks, because that is your job and lives depend upon it.
Likewise, the security contracting industry has been extremely active and highly depended upon in this war, and yet an effective legal mechanism by which to govern this industry has yet to be established. I don’t get it? Especially when there is precedent for establishing a legal mechanism called Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 11 in the US Constitution. Granting a LoM is the duty of congress, and yet they have completely shirked this duty and passed on the establishment of legal mechanisms governing contractors upon the various agencies of government. Talk about passing the buck? And look how much confusion this has created?
A LoM could have dictated exactly what laws and legal mechanisms congress wanted contractors to fall under. A LoM could also have an expiration date and be re-granted from year to year just so it stays current and based on the newest legal issues of the day. But the best part of it is it is a power granted to congress and would give them the ultimate control over the companies who wish to obtain extremely valuable government contracts. No middlemen or agencies, no lobbyists–just congress and a company in a room hashing out a reasonable LoM. If congress wants a company to fall under the UCMJ, it could become an official decree backed by the Constitution and a congress that issued the LoM. If it is MEJA or whatever, congress can make that happen through this legal mechanism.
Or we can continue to flail in the wind and harm the war effort due to this inaction by congress. –Matt
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Efforts to Prosecute Blackwater Are Collapsing
October 20, 2010
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON — Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against Blackwater Worldwide personnel accused of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cases are beginning to fall apart, burdened by a legal obstacle of the government’s own making.
In the most recent and closely watched case, the Justice Department on Monday said that it would not seek murder charges against Andrew J. Moonen, a Blackwater armorer accused of killing a guard assigned to an Iraqi vice president on Dec. 24, 2006. Justice officials said that they were abandoning the case after an investigation that began in early 2007, and included trips to Baghdad by federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents to interview Iraqi witnesses.
The government’s decision to drop the Moonen case follows a series of failures by prosecutors around the country in cases aimed at former personnel of Blackwater, which is now known as Xe Services. In September, a Virginia jury was unable to reach a verdict in the murder trial of two former Blackwater guards accused of killing two Afghan civilians. Late last year, charges were dismissed against five former Blackwater guards who had been indicted on manslaughter and related weapons charges in a September 2007 shooting incident in Nisour Square in Baghdad, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed.