Jeremy Scahill has a lengthy piece in The Nation about the man, whose nine year old son was shot by Blackwater security guards, who is now the last obstacle to the company airbrushing the massacre out of existence.
Blackwater's Youngest Victim
Jeremy Scahill writes for The Nation (January 28th): Every detail of September 16, 2007, is burned in Mohammed Kinani's memory. His 9 year old son was the youngest person killed by Blackwater forces in the infamous Nisour Square massacre. In May 2008 Mohammed flew to Washington to testify in front of a grand jury investigating the shooting. But this past New Year's Eve, federal Judge Ricardo Urbina threw out all the criminal charges against the five Blackwater guards. The manslaughter charges were dismissed not because of a lack of evidence but because of what Urbina called serious misconduct on the part of the prosecutors.
Then, a few days after the dismissal of the criminal case, Blackwater reached a civil settlement with many of the Nisour Square victims, reportedly paying about $100,000 per death.
Blackwater released a statement declaring it was "pleased" with the outcome, which enabled the company to move forward "free of the costs and distraction of ongoing litigation." But Mohammed Kinani would not move on. He refused to take the deal Blackwater offered. As a result, he may well be the one man standing between Blackwater and total impunity for the killings in Nisour Square.
See more at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/scahill
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