A federal judge in Washington on Thursday dismissed criminal charges against five Blackwater security guards accused of killing 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in an incident that strained U.S.-Iraqi relations and sparked an outcry over the military's use of private contractors.
The judge did not rule on the substance of the charges against the security guards, but instead decided that prosecutors had wrongly relied on what the guards told State Department investigators shortly after the incident. As government contractors, the Blackwater employees were required to speak to an investigator after a shooting.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said that the use of these statements -- which were given with a promise of immunity -- violated the defendants' rights against compelled self-incrimination...
I was under the impression that if the Obama administration were worried about securing convictions of those who committed criminal acts in wartime they would just hold the suspects indefinitely without a trial anyways. Oh, wait I'm sorry. That only applies to brown foreign people.
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