Security guards working for the private US contractor Blackwater have been found guilty of manslaughter in the deaths of a group of unarmed civilians at a crowded Baghdad traffic junction during one of the darkest incidents of the Iraq war. The massacre in 2007 left a total of 17 people dead and 20 seriously injured after the guards working for the US State Department fired heavy machine guns and grenade launchers from their armoured convoy in the mistaken belief it was under attack by insurgents.
During the trial’s emotional closing arguments, jurors were told of the “shocking amount of death, injury and destruction” that saw “innocent men, women and children mowed down” as they went about their business in downtown Baghdad.
The federal prosecutor Anthony Asuncion said: “These men took something that did not belong to them: the lives of 14 human beings. They were turned into bloody, bullet-riddled corpses at the hands of these men.”
“It must have seemed like the apocalypse was here,” said Asuncion in his closing argument, as he described how many were shot in the back, at long range, or blown up by powerful grenades used by the US contractors.
Link:http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...ty-guards-iraq