Nicholas A. Slatten, a former Blackwater security contractor, was convicted of first-degree murder — a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence.
Nicholas A. Slatten, a former Blackwater security contractor, was convicted of first-degree murder — a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence.
WASHINGTON — A federal jury on Wednesday found a former Blackwater security contractor, Nicholas A. Slatten, guilty in the deadly 2007 shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis in Nisour Square in Baghdad, long considered one of the lowest points of the Iraq war and an indelible symbol of America’s protracted and unpopular involvement.
The verdict was the second time a federal jury had found Mr. Slatten, a former sniper, guilty in the high-profile episode that outraged Americans over what many saw as a military mission with no clear strategy.
For a decade, the case against Mr. Slatten and several other contractors has been winding its way through the federal justice system, drawn out across three administrations as American officials sought to make good on their promise to Iraqis that they would bring the men responsible for the killings to justice.
After the shooting, the United States implored its Iraqi allies to trust the American justice system, which, over 10 years, has delivered guilty verdicts, retracted them — and on Wednesday delivered one again.
Mr. Slatten and three other Blackwater Worldwide contractors had been found guilty of murder in 2014 and faced lengthy prison sentences. But last year, a federal appeals court threw out the verdicts for three of the contractors and ordered a retrial for Mr. Slatten. That retrial resulted in a hung jury after 16 days of deliberation this year, and Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia declared a mistrial.
On Wednesday morning, a jury found Mr. Slatten, 35, guilty of first-degree murder — a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence — for his role in killing one of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the Sept. 16, 2007, shooting. Ten women, two men and two children were killed in the shooting, and 18 others were injured, according to the United States attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. A sentencing date has not been set.
Prosecutors said Mr. Slatten was the first to fire gunshots, unprovoked, into the busy square. He was part of a convoy of 19 contractors in four armored trucks.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who has closely followed the case and was critical of the Bush administration’s early responses to the shooting, applauded the Justice Department’s pursuit of the case.
“It’s critical that Americans working on behalf of the U.S. government are held accountable in our courts for crimes they commit abroad,” Mr. Leahy said. “These cases are especially difficult to pursue given jurisdictional shortcomings in our laws, as well as the location of the crime and witnesses.”
In the first trial, Mr. Slatten was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Three other Blackwater contractors, Dustin L. Heard, Evan S. Liberty and Paul A. Slough, were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to carry out a violent crime. Because of mandatory sentencing guidelines for machine-gun crimes, they were given 30 years in prison. A fifth contractor, Jeremy Ridgeway, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter before the 2014 trial and cooperated with prosecutors.
Defense lawyers said the contractors were part of a convoy that came under insurgent fire, a claim that prosecutors and witnesses disputed. The machine-gun charges were considered controversial, even within the Justice Department, because the law was created during the crack-cocaine epidemic in an effort to stem the use of military-grade automatic weapons. In addition, automatic weapons are standard among military and security personnel in conflict zones.
In 2017, a federal appeals court ruled that the machine-gun charges and subsequent sentences were “grossly disproportionate to their culpability for using government-issued weapons in a war zone.”
The Nisour Square shooting forced the United States government to reconsider its reliance on contractors in war zones. At the time of the shooting, Blackwater was among the most powerful American security contractors working in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company, which in 2009 changed its name to Xe Services, won more than $1 billion in contracts and provided security services to American diplomats abroad.
Since the shooting, security contractors have said they have focused on making sure their guards are properly trained. But the government continues to rely heavily on private contractors in its overseas missions.
Blackwater’s founder, Erik D. Prince, sold the company in 2010, but has remained in the private security contractor business. Mr. Prince has advised the Trump administration and argued it should use more private contractors in Afghanistan.
Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy SEALs, presented a plan to American and Afghan officials to use contractors to deliver a military withdrawal from Afghanistan, a potentially appealing objective for President Trump and other Americans who long ago grew weary of the United States’ involvement, which began in 2001.
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