Four security contractors of the private military firm, formerly known as Blackwater, filed an appeal on Monday regarding their convictions. According to reports, the men's defense attorneys made the appeal immediately after a key witness in the case against them made a significant change in his testimony.
As reported by the Associated Press via Yahoo! News, the case against former Blackwater contractors Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Herd and Paul Slough initially ended in 2014, following a series of investigations and trials that spanned for almost nine years. Slatten was found guilty of manslaughter and is currently serving a life-sentence, while the other three have each been given 30-year sentences for manslaughter.
The case against the private military contractors or PMCs stem from the deadly shooting in Baghdad's Nisour Square in Iraq in September of 2007. At that time, Blackwater was hired by the U.S. government to escort and protect U.S. embassy officials working in the country.
But then, according to witnesses, the PMCs opened fire on civilians while driving near Nisour Square. The incident left 14 people dead.
Blackwater's defense lawyers said that the contractors only started shooting after seeing a white Kia car moving towards the convoy, Herald Net reported. They said the vehicle could have been a car bomb.
However, one witness, a traffic officer in Iraq, told prosecutors the driver of the Kia sedan was immediately shot and killed when the contractors starting firing. He then said that he ran towards the convoy to tell the PMCs to stop shooting.
But, before a sentencing hearing was held in April last year, the same witness submitted another testimony that conflicted with his first one. According to his new statement, the driver of the suspected car bomb was still alive when the contractors were shooting. Also, he said that he never ran in front of the convoy and only remained inside his traffic kiosk.
Despite the new testimony, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth refused to hold a new trial regarding the case against the contractors. The defense lawyers, however, stressed that the changes made by the witness in his statement could acquit the convicted Blackwater employees, Military Times has learned.
