Nick received a mandatory life sentence, without the possibility of parole. Some allegedly fired “blindly.” Others allegedly precisely targeted obviously innocent Iraqis for death. Why did the DOJ hold multiple trials for over a decade? Or playing politics? The DOJ did appeal, and the D.C.

Raven 23 was part of a Blackwater group under contract to the State Department. In fact, during my deployment a young soldier in our unit faced exactly the same scenario.

Prosecutors threatened them with unconscionably long prison sentences.

Was the DOJ seeking justice? Finally, each of the Raven 23 defendants has suffered repeated violations of his constitutional rights.

This series re-examines the US Department of Justice’s controversial prosecution following a controversial battle in Baghdad. As a result, the prosecutors tried the men—who are from Tennessee, Texas, and New Hampshire—in the most liberal, anti-military jurisdiction in the country. Around noon on September 16, 2007, “Raven 23”, a tactical support team of Blackwater Worldwide security guards in Iraq, on contract to the State Department, was responding to an attack on another Blackwater convoy transporting a State Department person.

Abdication of moral responsibility. Al-Qaeda used civilian vehicles to attack American troops, and al-Qaeda tried to hide in the civilian population. I deployed to Diyala Province in Iraq two months after the incident, and already a certain narrative had been established.
The weasel-worded indictments stretch MEJA beyond the factual and into the political, saying that the Blackwater mission is “related to supporting the mission of the Department of Defense in Iraq.” But “related to supporting” could cover any crime in Iraq. An Iraqi Policeman, wearing [a] blue button down shirt and black pants, began to push the vehicle towards [the] team. While leaving the traffic circle, Slough continued to fire his weapon, resulting in additional deaths and injuries. The Iraqi government was outraged. Advertisements on Iraqi television promised compensation for persons who identified themselves to be victims of the incident.

He was tried again, for a third time, and convicted of murder.

Your email address will not be published.

The prosecutors presented testimony from two cooperators (who were key witnesses against all four men) that Nick sparked a mass shooting by both Blackwater and the Army, without any provocation, the week before the Nisur Square incident. There is little question that a pardon would be diplomatically difficult.

In fact, he answers hundreds more questions than his opponent.

The Iraqi Police collected almost all of the physical evidence, most of which disappeared. (According to a Congressional Research Service report, as of September 2008, there are still about 10,000 contractor personnel in Iraq providing quasi-military security services.). The federal district court in Washington, D.C., originally dismissed all charges based on constitutional rights violations by federal prosecutors. Team member Jeremy Ridgeway pled guilty to firing unjustified shots into the white Kia and into a white Chevrolet Celebrity. Bad precedent. They ultimately received sentences of 12 to 15 years, after an appeals court threw out their 30-year mandatory minimum sentences as cruel and unusual punishment under the United States Constitution. The FBI largely outsourced the investigation to the Iraqi Police, an organization infiltrated with anti-American insurgents. There are times for retreating to defensible ground. The best evidence that he did take the fatal shot came not from eyewitnesses but from people who claim they heard Slatten shoot first. #freeraven23...

Consider it?

Their service to this country has been rewarded with years of imprisonment, and, in Nick’s case, life in prison.

The government also hid from Nick, his lawyers, the court, and the jury government documents that included third-party accounts (from Army officials) proving that the narrative presented through these witnesses was entirely false. Risk to us.

Between three trials, multiple court decisions, and hundreds of pages of briefs, examining the facts is like peeling an onion of complexity and confusion. The Iraqis collected the great bulk of the evidence.

After being honorably discharged from their respective military branches, all four veterans deployed to Iraq, serving under Blackwater’s contract to protect State Department officials who came under attack. After experiencing immense political pressure (like Joe Biden’s Iraqi press conference) and after being chastised by left-leaning press (including The New York Times), prosecutors charged Nick with first-degree murder of the white Kia driver when Nick refused to waive his statute of limitations defense. Here are just some of the things government prosecutors did to wrongly convict these decorated veterans: Hid evidence of insurgent provocation and attack.
The government hid from the defense for 10 years the intelligence information showing that the head of the Iraqi investigation, Col. Karim, apparently had ties to terrorist organizations. The prosecutors violated a court order by failing to instruct their most critical witness against Nick not to offer inflammatory speculation that had been excluded from Nick’s case.

The defense does not, however, argue that every member of the team behaved responsibly. I read that the charges against the men were initially dismissed.