Blackwater shooting probe shifts to Baghdad

[maddezmom]

Source: Seattle Times

Federal prosecutors and FBI agents from Seattle are in Baghdad this week interviewing witnesses and reviewing evidence in the investigation of a former Blackwater USA security operator suspected of the December 2006 slaying of the Iraqi vice president's bodyguard.

U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan said Thursday that his office should decide whether to indict former Army paratrooper Andrew Moonen of Seattle in connection with the killing by the end of summer or, "hopefully, sooner."

Sullivan said that two criminal prosecutors — assistant U.S. attorneys Mike Lang and Annette Hayes — have been in Baghdad for nearly a week along with at least one FBI agent from the Seattle field office. One federal law-enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a Department of Justice attorney with expertise in war-crime prosecutions, Ivana Nizich of Washington, D.C., also was with the group in Baghdad.

Moonen, 27, was a Blackwater armorer who allegedly got drunk at a Christmas Eve party and shot a bodyguard for Vice President Abdel Abdul Mahdi during a confrontation in the "Little Venice" area of the Green Zone not far from the Iraqi prime minister's compound, according to congressional documents.



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