Free Republic

For-profit combat pilots fly Emirati Air Tractors

Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors used perjured testimony to secure guilty verdicts for four decorated veterans accused of indiscriminately shooting into a crowd of Iraqi civilians in September 2007 while working as private contractors for Blackwater, argue some of the defendants’ family members. Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, TN, one of the former Blackwater guards, was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in April. The other three — Paul Slough of Keller, TX, Evan Liberty of Rochester, NH, and Dustin Heard of Maryville, TN — were convicted of numerous counts of voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter,...

Erik Prince on Huma Abedin: ‘Agent of Influence Very Sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood’ Had Hillary Clinton’s Ear ‘for All These Years’ Retired Navy SEAL and former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince offered his insights on former SoS Hillary Clinton’s close personal aide Huma Abedin on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM. “Huma Abedin, the person closest to Hillary Clinton in the world, connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, edited a journal with radical Islamic thought in it. Her family, she comes from a bizarre background – well, it’s not really bizarre, it’s kinda commonplace in the Muslim world..... “Her parents, particularly her...

“Huma Abedin, the person closest to Hillary Clinton.....her father, was very much a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer or agent.....“The Muslim Brotherhood approach is a slow, creeping infiltration and takeover, with sharia law, so having an agent of influence very sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, sitting right at the ear of Hillary Clinton....is absolutely unacceptable,”

Truncated title. Full title: Erik Prince on Huma Abedin: ‘Agent of Influence Very Sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood’ Had Hillary Clinton’s Ear ‘for All These Years’ Retired Navy SEAL and former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince offered his insights on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s close personal aide Huma Abedin on Thursday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM. “Huma Abedin, the person closest to Hillary Clinton in the world, connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, edited a journal with radical Islamic thought in it. Her family, she comes from a bizarre background – well, it’s not really bizarre, it’s kinda...

The United States on Tuesday offered a reward of up to $3 million for information about a former Tajik special operations colonel whom it trained in counter-terrorism before he joined the Islamic State militant group. The U.S. State Department announced the reward for Gulmurod Khalimov in a statement that made no mention of his training, which included attending five U.S.-funded courses in the United States and Tajikistan between 2003 and 2014....

Retired Navy SEAL and former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince addressed the controversy surrounding President Obama’s secret $400 million payment to Iran on Monday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon. “For the administration to deny that it was a ransom payment is a complete lie,” said Prince, adding

Four former Blackwater security contractors found guilty in a deadly Baghdad shooting appealed their convictions on Monday, saying a key witness against them had changed his testimony after the trial and that prosecutors lacked jurisdiction to even bring the case. The appeals, long expected, represent the latest legal volley in a criminal case that's spanned years in Washington's federal court and that concluded with guilty verdicts following a months-long trial in 2014. Nicholas Slatten is serving a life sentence on a charge of first-degree murder. Three other former guards - Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Herd - were found...

The United Arab Emirates has secretly dispatched hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to Yemen to fight in that country’s raging conflict, adding a volatile new element in a complex proxy war that has drawn in the United States and Iran. It is the first combat deployment for a foreign army that the Emirates has quietly built in the desert over the past five years, according to several people currently or formerly involved with the project. The program was once managed by a private company connected to Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide, but the people involved in the effort said...

A federal judge sentenced former Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten to life in prison and three others to 30-year terms for their roles in a 2007 shooting that killed 14 Iraqi civilians and wounded 17 others. The carnage in Baghdad's Nisoor Square caused an international uproar over the use of private security guards in a war zone. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced Slatten, who witnesses said was the first to fire shots in the incident, to life on a charge of first-degree murder. The three other guards - Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard - were each sentenced...

Chris Kyle, the now-deceased Navy SEAL who is celebrated in Clint Eastwood's movie "American Sniper" was a proved liar. Jesse Ventura, the former military man, wrestler and governor of Minnesota, sued Kyle before he died, claiming that he defamed Ventura in his memoir, "American Sniper." Kyle claims to have punched out Ventura in a bar after Ventura bad-mouthed the troops who'd been sent to Iraq. Kyle was killed before the trial, but a jury determined that none of what he had written about Ventura was true and awarded Ventura $1.8 million. Because he's a proved liar, we should be awfully...

Erik Prince is not whining, he wants that clear. “However much I had to put up with, in terms of the assault from all sides, from the lawyers and the bureaucrats, pales in comparison to guys who lost their lives, who were maimed, either active-duty military or contractors,” he says. “I’m just providing a cautionary tale to the next guy dumb enough to run to the sound of the alarm bell. Because the government can drop you on a dime and leave you hanging.” For Prince, who in less than a decade took an obscure military training facility, Blackwater USA,...

Blackwater founder and former CEO weighs in

Like many liberal criticisms of market-based solutions to public policy problems, the idea of privatized armies is likely to conjure images of rogue mercenaries advertising in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine. However, many of today’s paid civilian soldiers are highly skilled and professional former Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Marines. They often are employed by private contractors because of their effectiveness as support staff, training instructors, security personnel, and occasionally as combat-ready operators. They are trained and ready to kill the enemy, not “degrade” him. Such contractors have been instrumental in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; filling...

Four former Blackwater security guards were found guilty Wednesday in the 2007 shootings of more than 30 Iraqis in Baghdad, and a federal judge ordered them immediately to jail.

A federal jury has returned guilty verdicts for all four former Blackwater security guards charged in the 2007 shootings of more than 30 Iraqis in Baghdad. The jury in Washington found Nicholas Slatten guilty of first-degree murder. The three other three guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were found guilty of voluntary manslaughter. The four men were charged with a combined 33 counts in the shootings. The jury had reached verdicts on only part of the charges, but Judge Royce Lamberth allowed them to announce the verdicts on Wednesday that they had reached. The jury is...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Jurors deliberating the fate of four former Blackwater security guards in the shootings of more than 30 Iraqi citizens were granted a request to watch a videotape showing the aftermath of the violence.</p> <p>Monday was the 25th day of deliberations by the jury of eight women and four men. They asked to see the tape, which had been shown during the trial.</p>

As the fight against the Islamic State unfolds, the take of Erik Prince, the founder of the former private security firm Blackwater, is straightforward: If the United States is unwilling to send in ground troops, “let the private sector finish the job.” Prince addressed the subject this week in a little-noticed blog post on the site of his newest security and logistics firm, Frontier Services Group. Prince left Blackwater, with its checkered history in Iraq, including the killing by contractors of 17 civilians in a 2007 shooting, in 2010. The trial of four Blackwater guards involved in the shooting in...

Washington -- Jurors in the murder and manslaughter trial of four Blackwater Worldwide security guards concluded their 15th day of deliberations on Thursday with no verdict in sight, showing that the group of 12 is painstakingly considering the issues of the complex case, which may work in the defense's favor, experts say. For 10 weeks, the Blackwater jury heard testimony alleging that Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and some other members of Blackwater's Raven 23 convoy fired shots in Baghdad's Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, killing 14 Iraqis and injuring 18 others. But the 12-person jury...

Erik Prince says his old private army could have dealt with the Islamic State militants on their own—and that Republicans need to start fighting ‘like we pay them to.’ Erik Prince has a message for ISIS: You’re lucky Blackwater is gone. On Friday night, the controversial founder of the private military company had plenty to say about what the organization he once ran could be doing in the fight against the so-called Islamic State—and also why Republicans need to stop being such losers. “It’s a shame the [Obama] administration crushed my old business, because as a private organization, we could’ve...