A former Blackwater security contractor was convicted Wednesday of murder at his third trial in the 2007 shooting of unarmed civilians in Iraq. Nicholas Slatten, 35, of Sparta, Tennessee, was found guilty of first-degree murder in Washington for his role in the shooting, which strained international relations and drew intense scrutiny of the role of American contractors in Iraq, the AP reports. Prosecutors charged that Slatten was the first to fire shots in the Sept. 2007 massacre that killed 14 civilians at a Baghdad intersection. They alleged that Slatten was unprovoked when he opened fire, first killing 19-year-old Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia'y, who was driving his mother to an appointment.
In all, 10 men, two women, and two boys, ages 9 and 11, were killed. Eighteen others were injured. The defense argued that Slatten and other Blackwater contractors opened fire only after Al Rubia'y's sedan, seen as a potential suicide car bomb, began moving quickly toward their convoy. No evidence of a bomb was found. In 2014, a jury convicted Slatten and three other contractors who were part of a four-vehicle convoy that was protecting State Department personnel in the area. An appeals court had overturned that conviction, saying he should have been tried separately from three other men. Slatten was retried last summer, but a mistrial was declared after the jury couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. Slatten's sentencing date has not yet been set.
(More
Nicholas A. Slatten stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
