A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”
In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into the country on Prince’s private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.
These allegations, and a series of other charges, are contained in sworn affidavits, given under penalty of perjury, filed late at night on August 3 in the Eastern District of Virginia as part of a seventy-page motion by lawyers for Iraqi civilians suing Blackwater for alleged war crimes and other misconduct. Susan Burke, a private attorney working in conjunction with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is suing Blackwater in five separate civil cases filed in the Washington, DC, area. They were recently consolidated before Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions. Burke filed the August 3 motion in response to Blackwater’s motion to dismiss the case. Blackwater asserts that Prince and the company are innocent of any wrongdoing and that they were professionally performing their duties on behalf of their employer, the US State Department.
"The former employee, identified in the court documents as “John Doe #2,” is a former member of Blackwater’s management team, according to a source close to the case. Doe #2 alleges in a sworn declaration that, based on information provided to him by former colleagues, “it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct.”
Based on hearsay? Really? Airtight man, air-fricking-tight!!
This is a civil matter whole different ball game than criminal court. There is a big difference between testifying before the Grand Jury, where hearsay is allowable to find probable cause, and a jury trial where the burden is substantially higher. All the Grand Jury gets you is an indictment. You use your minimal amount of case information to get the indictment and save your big guns for trial. Once arrests have been made, if they ever are, the information in those affidavits are the ones you want to read. Civil matters are huge headaches for those sued, that the litigants are trying to play this in the press so soon may speak to the weakness of their case.
Video - Liveleak
Any one seen this great piece of journalism. Of course you can’t have enough tin foil with out Mr. Scahill.
I love the bit at around 1:01 “Including sawed off semi automatic machine guns” Sounds like a guy who knows what the fuck he’s talking about. Kind of like semi automatic bolt action sniper rifles.
Fire why are you getting info and reading the Nation and the Huffington Post. Both your sources are nothing more than radical progressive mouth pieces for the DNC. The Nations/Huffington Post sole agenda is bash the Bush Administration and America’s war to defeat radical Islam.
I found the articles via digg, and wanted to cross reference here for some more information. Those were the only articles on the subject at the time of my post but you are right sjc, after browsing through The Nation/Huffington sites, they do seem geared towards a certain agenda. But as of today mainstream media outlets are starting to pick up on the story
