Blackwater Guard Found Guilty of Murder
A federal jury in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday found former Blackwater guard Nicholas Slatten guilty of one count of first-degree murder for his role in a 2007 massacre in Iraq that left at least 31 Iraqi civilians dead or wounded. This was the third attempt by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia. Slatten was convicted of murder in 2014 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but in 2017, the D.C.
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A federal jury in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday found former Blackwater guard Nicholas Slatten guilty of one count of first-degree murder for his role in a 2007 massacre in Iraq that left at least 31 Iraqi civilians dead or wounded. This was the third attempt by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia. Slatten was convicted of murder in 2014 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but in 2017, the D.C. Circuit reversed his conviction and ordered a new trial on the grounds that Slatten’s prosecution should have been severed from that of his co-defendants Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard. The government retried Slatten earlier this year, but a hung jury ended that effort in a mistrial. See my previous Lawfare post on the case here for more information.
Slatten has until Jan. 18 to file post-trial motions. A sentencing date has not yet been set. Stay tuned.
