US rights group sues Blackwater

BBC News ^ | 11 October 2007 | BBC

[Ancient Drive]

A US human rights group says it is suing private security firm Blackwater for unspecified damages for war crimes and wrongfully killing Iraqi civilians.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is acting on behalf of an injured survivor and three families of men killed by Blackwater guards on 16 September.

The Iraqi government said the incident in which 17 people died was unprovoked. Blackwater denies firing without cause.

The case has put a spotlight on private military contractors in Iraq.

BLACKWATER USA FACTS Founded in 1997 by a former US Navy Seal Headquarters in North Carolina One of at least 28 private security companies in Iraq Employs 744 US citizens, 231 third-country nationals, and 12 Iraqis to protect US state department in Iraq Provided protection for former CPA head Paul Bremer Four employees killed by mob in Falluja in March 2004

What happened Profile: Blackwater USA The action claims Blackwater "created and fostered a culture of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company's financial interests at the expense of innocent human life," the centre said in a statement.

It has been f

[Ancient Drive]

this is the kind of stuff that is going to bring down America the Beautiful. Is there not a single liberal entity who is on the side of U.S. of A? We are fighting a war on terror on many fronts. It's Americans against the world, Press, Terrorists, and [insert your group here]. Our Founding Fathers would drag the current state of affairs and snuff the life out of it.

[xcamel]

good luck finding a judge stupid enough to give them “legal standing” — oh wait....

[in hoc signo vinces]

All things aside...

Honestly...do these tards at these so called “Civil Rights” groups really want to piss the guys that work at BlackWater off?

It’s not like they’re sueing government employees (who have to play nice) to take “In God We Trust” off of coins etc...

[Puppage]

The Center for Constitutional Rights

I wonder if they're against my having guns?

[kcvl]

CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
Vincent Warren
Executive Director

Prominent Civil Rights Leader and Former ACLU Senior Attorney

Vince is an experience litigator and innovative advocate who knows how to turn cases into causes,” said Michael Ratner, CCR President.

At the ACLU he also litigated Dasrath v. Continental Airlines on behalf of plaintiffs removed from an airplane shortly after 9/11 because they were perceived to be Arab or Muslim. Mr. Warren coordinated the ACLU’s Hurricane Katrina Response Team; established the ACLU Native American Working Group to advance civil rights and combat educational discrimination in the Dakotas; and created and chaired the New York Indigent Defense Litigation Roundtable.

Mr. Warren has also worked as a staff attorney in the criminal defense division of the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, the single largest provider of criminal defense services for the City of New York. His public service includes working as a judicial law clerk in the U.S. District Court in New York; monitoring the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in South Africa under the auspices of the National Lawyer’s Guild; and serving as a volunteer with the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami.

[kcvl]

Beyond the courtroom, Mr. Warren was a leading African American voice for affirmative action, collaborating with the African American Policy Forum to launch a national public education project about local policies to remedy systemic discrimination.

Mr. Warren will oversee all of the Center’s legal, advocacy and education work in protecting and advancing the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the Center’s dockets on Guantánamo, Government Misconduct, International Human Rights, Racial & Economic Justice and Corporate Accountability.

Vincent Warren, CCR

To the rest of the world, Guantánamo is a symbol of overreaching presidential abuse of power, of arrogance, hypocrisy, lawlessness, and torture. To the Bush administration, it is merely a public relations disaster and, as such, it must be fixed, not by providing fair hearings to the detainees and ensuring that due process and the laws of the land are respected, but by mounting a vigorous and well-orchestrated PR campaign in response. One of the most damning documents on Guantánamo to be produced is known as the Seton Hall report and showed, analyzing the government’s own documents, that 92 percent of the people at Guantánamo were not Al Qaeda fighters and that 55 percent had been found by the military to not have committed any hostile act against the U.S. or our allies.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has represented the detainees at Guantánamo from the very beginning. We have visited men driven to despair with less and less faith that they would ever see justice, men who were turned over for enormous bounties to the U.S. because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or men who were fleeing the conflict, or men who were cooks, goatherders and other minor actors swept up and locked away, now lost to their families and branded terrorists forever. At most, five percent of the men at Guantánamo were captured by U.S. forces. In five years, only ten people out of 786 at Guantánamo have ever been charged with a crime; only one ever went before a Military Commission, and not a single one is currently charged.

[AndyJackson]

good luck finding a judge stupid enough to give them “legal standing”

Since they are suing on behalf of injured parties, I presume the suit is actually in the name of the injured parties and not in the name of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

[Hayzo]

More diversion from the left to masked the turn for success in Iraq and get compete moonbat control of government in ‘08

[USMCPOP]

Um, wait a minute. The alleged offense occurred where? The suit is filed where? Who has jurisdiction where?

[Publius6961]

A US human rights group says it is suing private security firm Blackwater for unspecified damages for war crimes and wrongfully killing Iraqi civilians.

I am not a lawyer or ever worked for one, but I understand the concept of "standing", which is a necessary precursor to a suit.

Unless this group has already made a successful argument that foreign persons, in areas where most of them are trying to kill our military personnel, are entitled to be represented by treasonous doofuses in American courts...

[BerryDingle]

Interesting pattern from what I see:

Haditha aerial surveillance suppressed.

Blackwater private security convoy rushed, prevailed, Iraqi government complains, wants license pulled.

Iraqi government official arrested at an Al Quada meeting during raid.

American Lawyers join in on destroying Blackwater with lawsuits.

Oct 9th, CNN reports an Austrailian private security firm shoots 2 women rushing their convoy. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/09/iraq.main/index.html?eref=time_world

Oct 11, UN and ACLU join in on complaints against Blackwater.

[appalachian_dweller]

>> Iraqi government official arrested at an Al Quada meeting during raid. <<

First of heard of this; however, it does not surprise me. Can you throw me some links? I’d be VERY interested in learning more about this.

Thanks in advance.

[Publius6961]

Well, that does it for me.

I'm convinced that all of them are innocent!

< /s >

[kcvl]

U.S. holding Iraqi lawmaker after raid on suspected insurgents

http://tinyurl.com/2my9vg

[omega4179]

One one hand, they said it was a war and a quagmire. Then when the surge cuts violence 50%, they say wait theres no war so why are security guards shooting people and they go after them.
Ambushes happen fast, the guards have to do whatever is deemed appropriate until all the nutjobs in that country are dead.

[JSteff]

This is not just about security firms from our country or our country in Iraq. The left hates security firms like Blackwater.

Search “Executive Outcomes” on google. I wondered how long these private security firms we were using would last.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

The CCR is a Communist Party creation, coming about as a project of the CPUSA-controlled, marxist dominated National Lawyers Guild (congressionally cited as a CPUSA front). It was created by William Kunstler, Arthur Kinoy, Peter Weiss, possibly CPer Morton Stavis, etc, from the law firm of Kunstler, Kinoy, Stavis and Weiss, and from other CPers in the NLG.

It was created to bring in New Left lawyers and legal workers who were not CP members nor necessarily members of the NLG, then, in the 60’s, a CP/Marxist controlled operation.

Members of another key CPUSA legal front, the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, also were involved with CCR.

Among CCR’s leaders have been Michael Ratner, a registered agent for Castro and avowed Marxist; Ron Daniels, a black marxist extremist who has just created a new radical front; and Marilyn Clements, from the Hanoi Lobby and Anti-Defense Lobby and pro-Sandinista lobby; and others whose records show their affinity for communist causes in the US and around the world (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Communist Yugoslavia/Milosevic, as well as being anti-Colombia, anti-Israel, and against all anti-terrorism programs).

Older reports on the CCR were published in the Congressional Record in the 1970’s and possibly early 1980’s by Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Ga), sometimes in Human Events weekly, and other conservative publications, including the old Pink Sheet on the Left/American Sentinel.

[BerryDingle]

II read it here in freepers a while back, but now I can’t find that article.
Here is CNN’s version of it.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/05/iraq.main/

[BerryDingle]

I read it here in freepers a while back, but now I can’t find that article.
Here is CNN’s version of it.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/05/iraq.main/

[Ramius]

For better or worse, these contractors are in fact immune from Iraqi law under agreements with the Iraqi government.

US law has no jurisdiction in Iraq, and this party has no standing to bring suit.

Looks like a non-starter to me.

Usual leftist waste of time.