RSS Feed MenuBy now it’s all over the news: the United States Justice Department continues its undeclared war on the Company Formerly Known as Blackwater:
Two Security Contractors Charged in Afghanistan Killings
January 7, 2010 9:52 p.m. ESTWashington (CNN) – Two men who worked as security contractors for the company formerly known as Blackwater have been charged with murder in the killings of two Afghan men, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
Christopher Drotleff and Justin Cannon are charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted murder each in connection with the May shootings in Kabul. The 12-count, 19-page indictment returned by a federal grand jury in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia also includes weapons charges against the two men.
The indictment was returned Wednesday but unsealed Thursday.
Both men were in Afghanistan working for the security company Paravant, a subsidiary of Xe, the military contracting firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide. FBI agents have arrested both men, the Justice Department announced.
Drotleff, Cannon and two other contractors, Steven McClain and Armando Hamid, were involved in the May 5, 2009, shooting that left two Afghan civilians dead and another wounded. The men had been hired by Paravant to help the U.S. Army train Afghan troops.
The contractors said they were driving their interpreters on a busy Kabul street called Jalalabad Road at around 9 p.m. when a car slammed into one of their two cars.
This vehicle driven by a contractor was hit in Kabul, Afghanistan, in May, leading to a deadly shooting.
“I immediately thought we were under attack,” McClain said in May.
The contractors got out to help their colleagues, and the vehicle that had struck the car did a U-turn and headed back at them, the men said. The contractors fired at the oncoming vehicle.
“The car was coming at us,” Cannon said in May. “At that point we attempted to stop and immobilize the vehicle and we engaged it in small arms fire. And the car didn’t stop, it just kept going.”
While I’m not a huge fan of Blackwater, in this case I say the burden of guilt is on the accuser. After what happened in Fallujah in 2004, any and every Westerner in the Middle East has got damn good reason to have a good immediate action drill for Jihad-fueled Road Ragers:
March 31, 2004: Four Blackwater Employees Killed and Mutilated in Fallujah
Where is the outrage? The burned, mutilated corpses of two Blackwater contractors hang from a bridge outside Fallujah while Iraqi civilians celebrate.
Four employees of the private security firm Blackwater; Jerry Zovko, Wesley Batalona, Scott Helvenston and Michael Teague, were blockaded by a mob while driving through Fallujah, and killed by small arms fire. Their bodies were then taken out of their two vehicles and mutilated by the angry mob. Images of two corpses of the contractors hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates River were seen all over the world.
We’ve got a few places here in the United States where whatever happens – you don’t stop and you never get out of the vehicle. Parts of Fayetteville, North Carolina are like that and I can name them for you. Oakland, California – where I joined the Army – has a few ambush zones of it’s own.
Sounds to me like these guys will walk – they’ve already said the magic words: “I immediately thought we were under attack.”
Originally published at STORMBRINGER.
teabag // Jan 10, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Contractors should NOT be doing the army’s job. End of story. They are mercenaries paid guns, they think they are outside the law. They are not.
They deserve a fair trial.
Sean Linnane // Jan 10, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Heads up, TEABAG: the Army’s job is to maneuver, close with and destroy the enemy, point blank. Any and everything else the Army does is icing on the cake – this includes nation building and other civil action, disaster relief, security services to NGO’s and other government agencies, and training and advising foreign armies.
All of the above tasks have been performed – historically AND legally – by civilian and extra-national agencies. The United States military does not have the manpower to provide the security requirements to the nation-builders, the NGO’s and other government agencies AND perform it’s military task in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A contractor is not necessarily a mercenary, and neither is a professional soldier. I am a professional soldier employed as a security consultant; I soldier for money, and there are people I refuse to work for, things I will not do for any amount of money.
I don’t know what kind of artificial, protected environment you were raised in, but out here in the real world it is not considered “outside the law” to use deadly force in defense of your life. I know this part of the law from personal experience.
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
I’ve been soldiering for more than a quarter century and I’ve seen all kinds of code names, call signs and noms de guerre. TeaBag, huh? I know what that means. That’s real classy. You give that yourself, or you earned it the hard way?
S.L.
Danny_K // Jan 10, 2010 at 5:28 pm
If you shot a bunch of people in the bad part of Fayetteville, would you not expect to have a trial? Don’t soldiers get charged with crimes sometimes? Why is Xe above the law?
Sean Linnane // Jan 10, 2010 at 5:48 pm
The Xe contractors are NOT “above the law” – they’ve been charged and indicted, which is quite an accomplishment for an event that occurred OUTSIDE of any DoJ jurisdiction that I’m aware of. Whatever; I’m a soldier not a lawyer – the difference is there are some things I simply won’t do for money.
BTW I know two guys who shot people in Fayetteville, and they weren’t even charged. A citizen is still entitled to arm himself and defend his life in some parts of this country.
balconesfault // Jan 10, 2010 at 9:37 pm
If we expect to build institutions of justice and democracy in Afghanistan – it means that we have to demonstrate to the Afghanis that those processes actually apply in America, as well. And out troops security depends on no small part on the support of the locals.
Afghan support for American troops has plummeted in the last few years – polling released in Feb 2009 showed the opinion of United States troops had fallen from 68 percent in 2005 to 32 percent early this year. And as our generals have commented, the sins of our contractors affects the locals opinions of our military forces.
Danny_K // Jan 10, 2010 at 10:43 pm
It’s not like these Blackwater guys talked about tax evasion on video tape like Acorn did, it’s just a few more dead Muslims. And it’s not like we’re trying to get them on our side or anything, they hate us for our freedoms don’t you know. I feel safer already!
COProgressive // Jan 10, 2010 at 11:49 pm
Sean said @ #2
” but out here in the real world it is not considered “outside the law” to use deadly force in defense of your life. I know this part of the law from personal experience.”
Hey Sean, just so you know, where you are isn’t the “real world”. You see, in the “real world” people don’t jump out of their cars and open fire on the other driver because of a traffic accident.
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
No, I can sleep quite peaceably in my bed at night without help from you or your kind.
Sean Linnane // Jan 10, 2010 at 11:57 pm
COProgressive
I was talking about North Carolina – and you’re RIGHT! People don’t jump out of cars and open fire, we don’t have a lot of road rage or driveby shootings or street crime. People are very peaceable and law abiding – mostly because everybody is armed.
As far as sleeping peaceably; if it wasn’t for me or my kind we’d be having this conversation in German. Or Russian.
SFTor1 // Jan 11, 2010 at 3:22 am
Sean:
Good riddance to those goons.
So North Carolinians maintains civil relations with each other out of fear of being shot? Must be a great place to live.
GOProud // Jan 11, 2010 at 7:49 am
When we have a Prez who has a notorious reputation of being M.I.A. on the War on Terror from a political party who sneers and defames military service at nearly every opportunity, why should anyone wonder that the most-ethically challenged Atty Gen since Janet Reno would attack NGO security firms that had a prominent role in the Bush-Cheney strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan?
I mean, come on. This is the DOJ run by a crooked, devious self-serving terrorist-protecting, ACORN supporting political hack and far Left elitist who called Americans “cowards”.
I just hope 2012 can get here fast enough to prevent a total disarmament and unilateral castration of America by Eric Holder and his highly partisan DOJ.
Sean Linnane // Jan 11, 2010 at 8:15 am
SFTor1 – You call them goons? Sheesh – they haven’t even had a trial yet. For all you know they were escorting the International Red Cross.
BTW North Carolina IS a great place to live. People are civil to one another and we don’t have the same kind of street crime you find in the big cities up North. Unfortunately we’re becoming infested with Yankees and they’re bringing with them the same politics & Unionism that screwed up the places they left behind.
You know that Southern saying, “Y’all come back now.”? Well, it’s just a saying . . .
COProgressive // Jan 11, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Sean said @ #8
“As far as sleeping peaceably; if it wasn’t for me or my kind we’d be having this conversation in German. Or Russian.”
(Laughter……… yeah, right!)
And if it weren’t for people like me, we’d be having this conversation in Vietnamese.
BTW, the guys that fought the Germans were citizen soldiers and the guys the stood up to the Russians were citizen soldiers serving their country, not “For-Hire” mercenaries. But you just keep patting yourself on you back.
SFTor1 // Jan 11, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Sean,
I will grant you that I expressed my personal opinion about that particular bunch. They do get their day in court. I also find little reason to like Eric Prince, who has used his organization as a platform for extreme religious activities.
I live in San Francisco, which is a pretty civil place. The community here seems to manage to maintain civility without the aid of firepower.
As far as the Yankees are concerned I can only wish you luck. How about changing that old saw to “Ya’ll go back now?”
Sean Linnane // Jan 11, 2010 at 8:44 pm
SFTor1:
I used to live in San Francisco, I lived there for several years. Nice city, reminds me a bit of Sydney. Only place on five continents I’ve ever been mugged. They didn’t get my watch or my wallet, even though I was unarmed at the time. I had them outnumbered; there were only two of them.
S.L.