Friday, October 16, 2009
Paul Slough, one of the Blackwater 5
In the name of granting the defendants a fair trial, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina decided on Wednesday to close the pretrial hearings of five Blackwater guards involved in a Baghdad shooting in 2007 that left 14 Iraqis dead. Urbina said he wanted to shield witnesses and potential jurors from publicity while he hears testimony from the Justice Department and the guards’ attorneys over the admissibility of statements from the guards taken by the State Department after the incident.
The Washington Post protested in a letter to Urbina his decision to close his court to the public and the media. Urbina responded that the guards’ rights to a fair trial outweighed the public’s interest in attending the hearings.
The five guards, Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball, are charged with voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations stemming from the shootings on September 16, 2007. One guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, has pled guilty and is expected to testify against the others.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Judge Closes Off Pretrial Blackwater Hearings (by Del Quentin Wilber, Washington Post)
Iraq Victims, Witness Recount Blackwater Shooting (by Dina Temple-Raston, NPR)
The Blackwater Killings in Baghdad (Expose-the-War-Profiteers.org)
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