Blackwater shooting probe moves from Seattle to Baghdad

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 today 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.

The bodyguard, 32-year-old Raheem Khalif, died the following day.

The case is being handled by the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle because Moonen lives here.

Moonen's Seattle attorney, Stewart Riley, said he was aware of the trip and that he expected to talk to prosecutors upon their return. Riley said the issues of self-defense and the broader question of whether the Department of Justice even has jurisdiction to prosecute Moonen remain unresolved.

It is possible that neither Iraqi law or military justice can be applied in the case, since Moonen is no longer in Iraq or a member of the military. Since Blackwater was contracted through the State Department, some legal experts question whether some form of diplomatic immunity might be applied.

One highly placed federal law-enforcement source familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the issue of jurisdiction "is not as clear as we would hope it would be." The issue, the source said, "will be hotly contested" if Moonen is indicted.

There are other hurdles to a prosecution. Any Iraqi witnesses would have to be found in that war-torn country and brought to Seattle for testimony before a grand jury and possibly at trial, according to a congressional source familiar with the investigation. Witnesses employed by Blackwater will also have to be found and secured.

The Department of Justice and the State Department have clashed over the prosecutors' trip — which had been in the planning stage for months — mostly over safety concerns about the U.S. investigators. Blackwater still holds the contract for diplomatic security in Iraq, and the prosecutors, as guests of the embassy, would be under the company's protection.

Lang and others have said the group intended to interview witnesses who live outside the heavily protected Green Zone and would require armed escorts, likely working for Blackwater, a private security firm based in North Carolina that has received more than $1.25 billion in government contracts in Iraq since 2000.

Moonen, who had served in Iraq while with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division before being hired by Blackwater, was fired after the shooting, fined and then taken out of the country with permission of the State Department within 36 hours of the incident, according to an Oct. 1, 2007, memorandum presented to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The committee has been harshly critical of the State Department, whose actions approving Moonen's departure from Iraq after the shooting "raise serious questions about how State Department officials responded to reports of Blackwater killings of Iraqis," according to the memo.

Iraqis were outraged at Khalif's shooting — government officials called the killing a "murder" — and the State Department suggested Blackwater make a "sizable payment" to Khalif's family. The U.S. charge d'affairs recommended $250,000, according to the memo. Blackwater paid them $15,000.

Moonen, meantime, was hired by another contract security firm two months later to work in Kuwait. Democratic members of the oversight committee have questioned whether the State Department withheld information about the Iraq shooting from the Department of Defense, allowing Moonen to return to the Middle East.

More than nine months passed before the Department of Justice publicly confirmed it was investigating Moonen and the Khalif shooting, and then only after a Sept. 16, 2007, shootout involving Blackwater operatives that left at least 11 Iraqis dead. The Oversight Committee memorandum said the delay raises questions about "whether there is any serious effort to pursue a prosecution in this matter."

Sullivan, the U.S. attorney here, said the trip to Baghdad by his prosecutors should put an end to that question.

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com