Blackwater slaying case focuses on man from Washington

SEATTLE-- Somewhere in western Washington state is a former Blackwater contractor who might, under normal circumstances, be on trial in Baghdad.

He was wandering drunk around the Green Zone after a party last Christmas Eve when he encountered -- and fatally shot -- a 32-year-old guard to Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi, according to a congressional report released this week.

Blackwater immediately arranged to have the State Department fly the 26-year-old contractor back to the United States, fired him and fined him, and paid the slain guard's family $15,000.

But federal officials say he's not in custody. They barely acknowledge his existence, let alone release his name or discuss the status of the investigation.

The shadowy case highlights the murky legal issues surrounding the controversial security firm's Iraq-based employees, who may be exempt from both U.S. and Iraqi law.

"What normally would be a major option would be to have him prosecuted in Iraq," said Ron Slye, director of the international comparative law program at Seattle University Law School. "The problem is of course, under Iraqi law as put into place by the U.S., there's no jurisdiction over these people."

Amid an outcry from Iraqis who questioned how an American could kill someone in those circumstances and return to the U.S. a free man, the Justice Department announced it would investigate.

The case has been turned over to the U.S. attorney's office for western Washington, where the man lives, Bush administration officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation.

Mark Bartlett, the first assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle, said Tuesday he had no comment, joining a long list of federal officials here who would not confirm or deny anything about the former contractor's case. Robbie Burroughs, a spokeswoman for the FBI, said she could say only that the man is not in custody.

Blackwater chairman Erik Prince was questioned Tuesday on Capitol Hill by lawmakers looking into the role his company's personnel played in a Sept. 16 shootout that left 11 Iraqis dead and the slaying of the Iraqi vice president's guard.

"It's been 10 months and the Justice Department has not done anything to him," Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., said in questioning Prince about the Christmas Eve shooting. "If you work for Blackwater, you get packed up and you leave within two days and you face a $1,000 fine."

Federal prosecutors and legal experts interviewed by The Associated Press noted the incredible complexity in trying to determine who has jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. citizens in Iraq, let alone the logistical difficulties of actually building a case, accumulating evidence and deposing witnesses.

If prosecutors were to take the former Blackwater contractor's case to a grand jury, it would likely be under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000, which provides that any member of the military, Department of Defense worker or contractor, or anyone "supporting the mission of the Department of Defense overseas" can be prosecuted in the U.S. for crimes committed abroad.

However, that poses a hurdle: Blackwater was hired to provide security to the State Department in the Green Zone; prosecutors would have to show that the arrangement supported the Defense Department's mission in Iraq.

Another option would be to take the case to a military court. The U.S. Code of Military Justice was amended in 2006 to address crimes committed by those serving with the armed forces in the field, said Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

The Supreme Court has held that civilians cannot be tried in military court -- most famously in the 1950s, in the cases of women accused of killing their enlisted husbands.

Slye said one other avenue exists, however unlikely it may be: trying the former Blackwater employee under the 1996 War Crimes Act, which covers any U.S. national who commits a war crime. To do so, prosecutors would first have to prove that the war in Iraq is an armed conflict under the Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration has been hostile to the notion that the conventions apply in Iraq and the war on terror.