Blackwater defense: Iraqi police removed evidence

[unhappycamper]

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/08/blackwater-defense-iraqi-police-removed-evidence



This Sept. 25, 2007 file photo shows an Iraqi traffic policeman inspecting a car destroyed by a Blackwater security detail in al-Nisoor Square in Baghdad, Iraq.

Blackwater defense: Iraqi police removed evidence
By Pete Yost
The Associated Press
© August 28, 2014

WASHINGTON

A defense attorney told a federal jury on Wednesday that Iraqi national police removed evidence that would prove Blackwater security guards were being fired on by insurgents, prompting the guards to return fire in shootings that killed or wounded over 30 Iraqi civilians.

The assertion came in closing arguments at the guards' trial that began in June. Prosecutor Anthony Asuncion told the federal jury that the Blackwater guards unleashed a hail of gunfire that left "bloody, bullet-riddled corpses" at Nisoor Square in downtown Baghdad seven years ago.

Lawyers for the defendants said the guards acted in self-defense in firing their weapons, that there is ample evidence they were fired upon by insurgents, but that additional evidence supporting their case had disappeared.

"We will never know the extent to which Iraqi national police scrubbed the scene" of evidence that Blackwater guards were fired on, said Brian Heberlig, who is representing former Blackwater guard Paul Slough.