A former Blackwater security contractor was sentenced to life in prison for firing the first shot after mistaking an unarmed civilian for a suicide bomber in an incident that left 14 people dead in Iraq 12 years ago.
Nicholas Slatten, then 23, was part of the security detail for a four-vehicle convoy that was protecting U.S. State Department personnel when he opened fire at a crowded Baghdad traffic circle on Sep. 16, 2007.
That single shot set off a flurry of machine-gun fire that killed innocent civilians.
A jury found Slatten guilty of first-degree murder in December 2018. A previous jury in 2014 had convicted him together with three other Blackwater contractors but an appeal court overturned that conviction, saying Slatten should have been tried separately, AP reported.
His family, who had called for leniency from the judge, said Slatten had been scapegoated in order to get a favorable public opinion and improve relations between the U.S. and Iraq. The family said they will fight the ruling.
“Nick, please accept my apology for what your country has done to you,” Darrell, Slatten’s father, told his son during the trial. “We will fight until hell freezes over to correct this travesty of justice.”
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Slatten said the trial was a “miscarriage of justice”, but the trial judge, Royce C. Lamberth of the federal district court for the District of Colombia, rejected this assertion of innocence.
“The jury got it exactly right,” Judge Lamberth reportedly said while issuing the sentence. “This was murder.”
