Blackwater Sued in US Court for Nisour Square ShootingsFamilies of Nisour Square victims, along with one survivor, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit this morning against Blackwater in federal district court. The suit represents one of the first times any Iraqi has taken legal action against a private military company working under contract from a U.S. government agency.
It’s unclear whether Judge Reggie Walton (yup, the Scooter Libby judge) will allow the lawsuit to proceed. Families of U.S. troops who died in a 2004 Blackwater plane crash in Afghanistan filed a negligence suit. But it’s rare for Iraqis to sue private-military companies in U.S. courts. One of the only precedents is a lawsuit filed by the same lawyers in the Blackwater case: a suit against contractors CACI and Titan for their role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. And that case, filed in 2004, is still snarled up in legal challenges over whether the Iraqi victims have standing to sue.
Attorneys with the Philadelphia firm Burke O’Neill and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed the suit (pdf) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It claims Blackwater is responsible for “the extrajudicial killing of Oday Ismail Ibraheem, Himoud Saed Atban, and Usama Fadhil Abbas,” and for mental and physical damages suffered by Talib Mutlaq Deewan, who survived the shooting. Deewan and the families are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, but no monetary amount is specified in the suit. The case has “great implications for the application of the rule of law and the rebuilding of the U.S.’s reputation abroad,” says Vincent Warren, CCR’s executive director and an attorney on the case. Contacts of CCR and Burke O’Neill on the ground in Iraq from the Abu Ghraib lawsuit reached out to the September 16 victims’ families to offer legal assistance.
The plaintiffs rely on the Alien Tort Statute for their suit, part of a 1789 law passed to give foreigners standing to sue U.S. persons or organizations if they can’t seek legal action in their own country. Thanks to a Coalition Provisional Authority edict known as Order 17, Blackwater is effectively outside Iraqi law.
Private security companies have in recent months sought new legislation clarifying the legal rules under which they operate abroad — in part, to avoid lawsuits like today’s. The International Peace Operations Association has thrown its weight behind a bill that passed the House last Friday firmly placing private military firms under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act — which allows U.S. government prosecution of crimes committed by uniformed personnel overseas — as “in the long-term interest of our industry.” Ironically, Blackwater withdrew from the IPOA recently.
But the significance of the suit doesn’t stop with the legal principle of Iraqis suing contractors. The complaint filed today could potentially expose much about Blackwater’s activities, both in Iraq and in general. In the course of discovery, the plaintiff’s lawyers are likely to ask for the disclosure of documents substantiating all sorts of rumored misdeeds. Among the allegations:
Reasonable discovery is likely to produce evidence of additional killings by Blackwater. Reasonable discovery is also likely to produce evidence that Blackwater on one or more occasions attempted to cover up its killings by paying modest sums (e.g., $15,000) to the families of Iraqis whom Blackwater forces shot for no reason. …
Reasonable discovery will establish that Blackwater significantly and consistently underreports excessive use of force by its employees in its own documentation. …
Reasonable discovery will establish that Blackwater heavily markets the fact that it has never had any American official under its protection killed in Iraq. Reasonable discovery will establish that Blackwater views its willingness to kill innocent people as a strategic advantage setting Blackwater apart and above other security companies. …
Reasonable discovery is likely to reveal Blackwater hired foreign nationals without regard for the fact that they were forbidden by the laws of their own country from serving as mercenaries.
Warren expects that Blackwater will file a motion to dismiss the case, meaning it’ll take a while — years, perhaps, if the Titan-CACI lawsuit is any guide — before the case actually proceeds, if at all. A phone call requesting comment from Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrell was not immediately returned.
Update: This post initially stated, erroneously, that the lawsuit represents the first time Iraqis have sued a U.S. private military company. I regret the error.
