The UN HRC recognized the war crimes committed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine

— one of them occurred in the Kiev region with the participation of the "Right Sector"*, as Readovka wrote

The Commission of the UN Human Rights Council recognized that Ukrainian militants committed at least two war crimes — the first of them in Dmitrovka, Kiev region (https://t.me/readovkanews/39851),  and the second in Malaya Rogan, Kharkov region (https://t.me/readovkanews/29385), where Azov* militants participated in torture and executions. Both cases date back to March of this year.

In particular, the report indicates that the Ukrainian military shot, wounded and tortured captured (https://t.me/readovkanews/30049) Russian soldiers, and this is a war crime — after their surrender, the soldiers received the status of prisoners of war and were protected in accordance with international humanitarian acts.

"The video shows other motionless soldiers of the Russian armed forces nearby, including one with his hands tied behind his back and an obvious wound on his head, which suggests that he was most likely executed,"  - the report says.

Torture and execution of captured (https://t.me/readovkanews/39705) Russian soldiers is nothing new for Ukrainian militants. Readovka has written about more than five such cases (https://t.me/readovkanews/29311), which were documented by the executioners themselves and got into the network. In reality, there are many more atrocities committed by Ukrainian militants and national battalions (https://t.me/readovkanews/30068),  it's just that many of them don't get captured on camera or don't leak into the internet.

Main stream Western media will blame Russia.

 Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Blames Russia for 'Mass Grave".

 A Ukrainian neo-Nazi militant shares a disturbing video purportedly showing dead civilians thrown into a mass grave in Ukraine and blames Russian troops for the apparent massacre.

 A Russian human rights council has called for an international probe into the gruesome video.

FM Lavrov: For 8 Years, Kiev Regime Conducted Operation on Peaceful Civilians

Sergey Lavrov responded to critics of Russia's partial mobilisation by explaining that Ukraine has been mobilising for many years.

 Russia's top diplomat added that even women have been forced into the ranks of nationalist battalions.

 Other key points mentioned by Lavrov:
 📍Ukraine has turned into Nazi totalitarian state
 📍Former Ukraine PM called people in Donbass "non-humans" in 2015 - Zelensky recently said they are "sometimes people"
 📍People of Donbass faced financial, transport blockade
 📍Donbass denied basic rights guaranteed by intl pacts
 📍Russia has evidence of Ukrainian criminal activity by its military  

Donetsk civilians killings.

*Warning: the footage is not blurred and shows quite clearly Ukraine's terrorism of Donetsk today, killing at least five in a very central area of the city, where there are no military targets, only Donetsk civilians.  

This comes just 3 days after Ukraine shelled a western district of Donetsk, killing 13 civilians, including 2 children. That scene was horrific, body parts everywhere, bodies torn in half. 

Two days before that, Ukraine shelled the heart of Donetsk, killing four civilians. 

Ukraine is using western weapons in slaughtering the civilians of Donbass.

Warning: the footage is not blurred and shows quite clearly Ukraine's terrorism of Donetsk today.

Pure Ukrainian terrorism.

Courtesy : Eva K Bartlett 

Watch more video : click here 

Israel War Crimes

Palestinians? whether u're Christians (Shireen) or Muslims (Ghufran), u're at the receiving end of IOF (security forces) guns! Just to give some ideas, many think that it's Jews versus Muslims, especially after "the war against terror",especially after POTUS Bush invented mantra!

U S War Crimes: In 3 countries - pada hari Nuzul Quran

All Syrians at the receiving end of the bomb:

Drone Warfare Civilian drone deaths triple in Afghanistan, UN agency finds

Drones accounted for a third of all civilian deaths in air strikes. (Photo: Defence Images)

Civilian drone deaths in Afghanistan tripled last year, according to a report by a UN agency. Forty-five civilians died in drone strikes in 2013.

The report, by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama), found that drone strikes accounted for at least a third of all civilian deaths in air strikes last year. Unama notes that it is sometimes difficult to establish which type of aircraft carried out a strike, so the true total could be higher.

The UK and US are the only countries to operate armed drones in the conflict. A December 2012 report by the Bureau found that the two forces had carried out over 1,000 drone strikes in the country in the previous five years. British drones have carried out over a fifth of all these strikes, despite having a much smaller fleet.

Related story – Revealed: US and Britain launched 1,200 drone strikes in recent wars

Unama identifies 19 separate incidents in which civilians were killed. It raises concerns about ‘possible negligence’ by international troops over a drone strike on September 7 2013 in which local officials immediately claimed civilians had died. The governor of Kunar province, where the attack took place, told Reuters: ‘Four women, four children, two drivers, a merchant and three suspected (insurgents) were killed.’

 ‘The apparent failure of international forces to identify the presence of a group of women and children… could suggest negligence’

- Unama report

‘During Unama’s initial meetings with Isaf on the incident Isaf denied the possibility of civilian casualties,’ the report notes. Isaf claimed a senior insurgent had probably been killed and the dead were ‘insurgents’, although it did not identify them.

‘After multiple meetings in which Unama called for a review of the incident, Isaf confirmed two civilian deaths “one female and one child” and “would not rule out the possibility of another woman’s death,’ Unama’s report adds.

Unama conducted over 50 interviews with relatives of victims, community representatives, and Afghan and Isaf officials, and found that the attack killed 10 civilians and seriously injured a four-year-old girl. It notes that Isaf has not published the results of any investigation into the incident or indicated any change in its targeting policies.

‘The apparent failure… of international forces to identify the presence of a group of women and children in a vehicle prior to engaging the vehicle with a UAV/RPA [drone] strike could suggest negligence,’ Unama notes. ‘Of further concern, was the apparent failure of international military forces to confirm the identity and/or status of the men accompanying the fighter targeted by international military forces.’

Isaf spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Will Griffin told the Bureau that after Isaf investigated, it ‘acknowledged responsibility for at least three civilian casualties’.

 ‘We certainly respect the work that Unama does in this regard and agree that any civilian casualty is one too many’

- Isaf spokesman

He added: ‘Isaf identified a target individual in a vehicle and followed him to an area remote from villages and apparent civilians. In spite of persistent observation, unknown to ISAF there were at least three civilians located in the vehicle with the target. Although ISAF’s engagement was successful against the insurgent target, regrettably the strike resulted in three other casualties. One of these was a four-year-old child, for whom ISAF took responsibility for sending to the US for advanced medical treatment.’

Asked about the disparity between Isaf’s casualty count and Unama’s, he pointed to ‘variance between the sources and methodolgies used by Isaf and Unama to verify information’. He added: ‘We certainly respect the work that Unama does in this regard and agree that any civilian casualty is one too many.’

Unama does not state which force operated the drone. A Los Angeles Times report on the strike, published in December 2013, mentioned discussions with US officials about the strike. Philip Hammond, the British defence minister, wrote in the Guardian in December 2013 that only one attack by a British drone has killed civilians – a March 2011 attack, in which four farmers were killed.

Related story – A changing drone campaign: US covert actions in 2013

The numbers killed in air strikes represented a tiny fraction of the overall violence captured in Unama’s report. After a decline in civilian deaths in 2012, last year they rose again to approach 2011′s record highs. Nearly 3,000 non-combatants were killed, including 1,300 women and children.

Three quarters of the deaths were caused by the Taliban and other insurgents, with improvised explosive devices alone killing almost 1,000 civilians. International air operations represented 2% of all civilian deaths, and declined by 10% compared to 2012.

The rising civilian toll in drone strikes is in stark contrast to the CIA’s operations over the border in Pakistan, where the Bureau has found drones killed a maximum of four civilians in the year’s 27 drone operations. However civilian casualties also rose in US drone operations in Yemen, where at least six civilians were killed in a US military strike that reportedly attacked a wedding procession.

Original here >>>
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Mass grave of Palestinians killed by Israel in 1948 found

Published on 1 Jun 2013 : Six mass graves have been found in a Muslim cemetery in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv. The graves date back to the 1948 Israeli war on the original residents of Palestinian lands.They contain remains of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. The bodies --- belonging to men, women and children --- were found during construction work on the cemetery.

Palestinian media expert, Nasser al-Laham says that the bodies were buried with no ethics on part of the Israelis and that they uncover the war crimes committed by Israeli forces in 1948.The majority of those buried were killed during heavy shelling in the area and the bodies were buried contrary to Muslim tradition.

A Jaffa fisherman --- now 80 years old --- has reportedly said that during the final months of the 1948 war he had helped collect the Arab dead in an area south of Jaffa. The fisherman said he had been a teenager at that time and he had brought the bodies for hasty burial in the cemetery.

The unmarked graves recovered from the site expose Israel's war crimes. Tel Aviv now is denying the families of the victims the courtesy to give them a Muslim burial.

UN probes drone assassination strikes

Published on Jan 27, 2013 : The investigation was announced in London on Thursday by Ben Emmerson -- the Special Investigator for the UN Human Rights Council. The focus -- according to Emmerson -- will be on about 25 of drone strikes conducted over the past several years in Pakistan -- Yemen -- Somalia -- Afghanistan -- and Palestine. At the UN on Friday -- a spokesman for Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon said the deadly strikes raise legitimate legal concerns. Haq added that Ban has urged relevant parties -- in this case the US -- UK -- and Israel -- to be transparent about the circumstances in which drones are used. The UK has said that it will comply -- but there are no such assurances from the US -- which has run its drone assassination program under deep secrecy -- mainly through the C.I.A. Much of the concern has to do with US strikes over Pakistani territory -- which have killed thousands -- including hundreds of civilians and nearly two hundred children. Pakistan's UN ambassador -- Masood Khan -- is the current Security Council president -- but he couldn't comment on the investigation in that capacity Friday because the Council has never taken up the subject of drone strikes.

Rachel Corrie (pic) Among First in Long Line of Foreign Rights Activists Murdered, Maimed by IDF

Source: Richard Silverstein

 The list belowwas compiled by the Institute for Middle East Understanding and lists foreign peace activists brutally maimed or murdered by the IDF over the past nine years.  It’s a list of ignominy.  It should also be noted that hundreds of Palestinian activists have been similarly maimed or murdered in the same period under similar circumstances at anti-Occupation protest rallies throughout the West Bank:

May 15, 2011 – 22-year-old Palestinian-American student Munib Masri is shot in the back with live ammunition by Israeli soldiers along the Lebanon border while he participates in a march to mark the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba, the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes during the establishment of Israel. The bullet destroys Masri’s left kidney and spleen and broke apart in his spine. He remains in a wheelchair.

May 1, 2011 – 60-year-old American citizen Sandra Quintano suffers two broken wrists and a laceration to her head after being assaulted by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Izbet al-Tabib during a peaceful demonstration against the construction of Israel’s wall, which will cut off villagers’ access to their land.

June 2010 - At a demonstration at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the occupied West Bank in 2010, 21-year-old American artist and student Emily Henochowicz is hit in the face by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli border police. The force of the impact fractures her jaw and orbital bone and causes the loss of her left eye.

May 2010 – American citizen Furkan Dogan is shot and killed by Israeli commandos who forcibly commandeer the boat he’s traveling on in international waters as part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Dogan is shot multiple times in his leg, foot, back, and twice to the head. A United Nations investigation concludes that he and five of the other victims have been shot “execution-style” at close range, finding that Furkan had been shot in the face after “lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time.”

March 2009 – Oakland native and nonviolent International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Tristan Anderson is shot in the face with a high-velocity tear-gas canister by Israeli forces while participating in a demonstration against a section of the wall Israel is building on land belonging to the town of Ni’lin in the occupied West Bank. Anderson suffers multiple fractures to his skull, a severe injury to the frontal lobe of his brain, and a collapsed eye socket, causing him to lose sight in his right eye. He spends more than a year in a Tel Aviv hospital recovering before returning to the US, where he continues to suffer the effects of his injury and is confined to a wheelchair.

May 2003 – British cameraman James Miller is shot and killed by Israeli troops while filming in Gaza. According to witnesses, there is no other shooting or violent activity in the area at the time Miller is killed. 

April 11, 2003 – A week after American ISM member Brian Avery is shot in the face and seriously wounded by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, British ISM member Tom Hurndall is shot in the head by Israeli soldiers in Gaza while he attempts to help a group of Palestinian children to safety after Israeli soldiers began shooting in the vicinity. After nearly a year in a coma, Hurndall dies in January 2004. Following pressure from the British government and Hurndall’s family, the Israeli army laid charges of manslaughter against a soldier who confessed to the shooting. However critics says the soldier, who is a Bedouin Arab, is a scapegoat for a series of violent attacks on foreign activists by Israeli soldiers. 

April 5, 2003 – American citizen and ISM volunteer Brian Avery is shot in the face by Israeli soldiers in the city of Jenin in the West Bank. Lucky to survive, Avery undergoes a series of facial reconstruction surgeries and suffers severe facial scarring. After initially refusing to investigate the incident, the Israeli government subsequently agrees to an out of court settlement paying Avery $175,000. 

March 16, 2003 – 23-year-old Washington State native and ISM volunteerRachel Corrie is run over and killed by an Israeli military bulldozer while trying to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes in the town of Rafah in Gaza.

The Occupation is unsustainable.  It must end.  These individuals and all who protest it, especially under the brutal watch of the Israeli security forces, are heroes. The IDF (and Border Police) are murderers.  They kill civilians.  Unarmed civilians.  Who protest for justice and human rights.  This is not a defensive army as its name implies, but an army that defends theft and dispossession.  Shame.

source here  >>

Families of Iran's murdered nuclear scientists sue Israel, US and Britain

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, one of five Iranian nuclear scientists murdered since 2010, with his son Alireza. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The families of murdered Iranian nuclear scientists have filed a lawsuit against Israel, the US and the UK, accusing them of involvement in assassination.

Rahim Ahmadi Roshan, whose son, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility,was killed in a bomb attack in January, told a press conference in Tehran that the families had asked Iran's judiciary to pursue their complaint through international bodies and bring those behind the killings to justice.

"We've filed an indictment against the Zionist regime and the arrogant powers," Roshan said. The judiciary "is to pursue this case with the relevant international bodies", he added.

Iran's state television broadcast purported confessions this month by 14 suspects in connection with the killing of five nuclear scientists since 2010. The channel showed pictures from a military barracks which it said was a training camp outside Tel Aviv in Israel where the suspects took courses, including on how to place magnetic bombs on cars – the method used in the killing of the scientists.

The suspects also acknowledged in the purported confessions that they received training in Israel.

read more  >>

Targetkillings Lawsuit: US Boy Killed By U.S. Drone

Published on Jul 18, 2012 by acluvideos : The ACLU and CCR have filed a lawsuit challenging the government's targeted killing of three U.S. citizens in drone strikes far from any armed conflict zone.

In Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta (Al-Awlaki v. Panetta) the groups charge that the U.S. government's killings of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Aulaqi, Samir Khan, and 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi in Yemen last year violated the Constitution's fundamental guarantee against the deprivation of life without due process of law.

The killings were part of a broader program of "targeted killing" by the United States outside the context of armed conflict and based on vague legal standards, a closed executive process, and evidence never presented to the courts.

US assassination drones kill 12 in northwestern Pakistan

A US Predator drone firing a Hellfire missile (file photo)

At least 12 people have been killed in a US assassination drone strike in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border. In the attack, which occurred on Monday, US drones fired several missiles at a private compound in the Shawal area in the North Waziristan tribal region, Reuters reported. 

 The targeted compound is in Dray Nashtar village, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan. Local residents said that the airstrike sparked a huge fire in the building. Most of the bodies have been recovered from the rubble. Some local media reports said five drones were still hovering over the area, creating panic among the people in the tribal region, and hampering the rescue work.

 Despite Pakistani government’s repeated calls on Washington to end the drone attacks, the US government continues its strikes on the tribal regions of the country. Washington claims its drone strikes target militants, although casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims of the non-UN-sanctioned attacks. Some 200 people have died in drone attacks in Pakistan's northwest tribal regions since the beginning of this year. 

 The killing of Pakistani civilians, including women and children, in the US drone strikes has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington, prompting Pakistani officials to send warnings to the US administration over the assaults. On January 31, US President Barack Obama confirmed that the United States uses the unmanned drones in Pakistan and other countries. 

 In reply to questions about the use of the assassination drones by his administration in a chat with web users on Google+ and YouTube, the US president said, “a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA” -- Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The aerial attacks were initiated by former US President George W. Bush but have been escalated under Obama.

Original : July 23, 2012 

Human rights disaster unfolding in Libya

By Derek Ford | JULY 21, 2012

Armed militias, previously employed by the NTC to fight against Gaddafi’s supporters, continue to roam the country, looting villages and engaging in abductions, killings and torture.

Nine months after the U.S./NATO-led overthrow of the Muammar Gaddafi government in Libya, the country remains entrenched in violence and disorder; human rights abuses are rampant.

In fact, according to Nasser al-Hawary of the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights, “The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi.” (Inter Press Service, July 14) This statement is telling, especially given that its source is a political opponent of the former government.

The National Transition Council, the pro-imperialist governing body in Libya, has been unable to establish any authority over the country. Armed militias, previously employed by the NTC to fight against Gaddafi’s supporters, continue to roam the country, looting villages and engaging in abductions, killings and torture.

Full Report : 

'Burma Muslims'

Palestine in same boat
 Published on Jul 21, 2012 by presstvmobile :

Mossad murdered at least four Iranian nuclear experts: Journalists

The cover of the book “Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars” by CBS national correspondent Dan Raviv and Israeli journalist Yossi Melman.

A new book has identified the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, as the culprit in the assassination of at least four Iranian nuclear scientists as part of a campaign to sabotage Iran's nuclear energy program.

In their book, entitled Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars, CBS national correspondent Dan Raviv and Israeli journalist Yossi Melman said that Israeli spies have killed at least four Iranian nuclear scientists. 

The Mossad agents are well-trained in shooting and placing “exquisitely shaped sticky bombs" and consider it their hallmark, the Associated Press quoted Raviv as saying on Friday.The book also says the assassinations were part of a campaign aimed at preventing Iran from developing its nuclear energy program.

"They don't farm out a mission that is that sensitive," so sensitive that Israel's prime minister has to sign off on it personally, Raviv said. 

"They might use dissidents for assistance or logistics but not the hit itself. The methodology and training and use of motorcycles is all out of the Mossad playbook. They wouldn't trust anybody else to do it." 

Iran had already announced that Iranian scientists Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, Daryoush Rezaeinejad, Professor Majid Shahriari, and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi were all assassinated by Israeli agents. 

Ahmadi Roshan and his driver (Reza Qashqaei) were assassinated in January 2012 after a motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to their car in Tehran. 

On July 23, 2011, gunmen killed Rezaeinejad outside his house in Tehran. Rezaeinejad and his wife were on their way to their child's kindergarten when they were approached by two men on a motorbike. The gunmen called him by name and shot Rezaeinejad, 35, in the neck when he turned around. 

On November 29, 2010, terrorists attached bombs to the vehicles of Iranian university professors Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi and detonated the explosives. Professor Shahriari was killed immediately, but Dr. Abbasi and his wife only sustained minor injuries. 

Professor Ali-Mohammadi, a lecturer at Tehran University, was killed by a booby-trapped motorbike in the Iranian capital in January 2010. The bombing took place near the professor's home in the Qeytariyeh neighborhood of northern Tehran.  

Obama administration repeatedly lies about drone kills?

If the increasingly frequent discussions about America’s drone program have you scratching your head, here’s an explanation: Obama administration officials have given inconsistent and conflicting accounts of the strikes, a new report reveals.

According to a write-up published this week by ProPublica, the White House has given infrequent and almost always inconsistent explanations for air strikes conducted by America’s unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. Although officials with the Obama administration rarely offer input on the civilian casualty count carried out by the controversial aircraft, the numbers that have been handed over to journalists— albeit usually on the condition of anonymity — range from zero to hundreds.

In conducting his research, Justin Elliot of ProPublica writes that he relied less on statistics drafted by overseas outlets that are considered more critical of the US drone program, instead favoring figures supplied by officials with direct ties to the Obama White House.

“Last month, a ‘senior administration official’ said the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under President Obama is in the ‘single digits,’” ” writes Elliott. “But last year ‘US officials’ said drones in Pakistan killed about 30 civilians in just a yearlong stretch under Obama.”

“Both claims can't be true,” Elliott acknowledges.

On his own part, US President Barack Obama told an audience during an Internet town hall earlier this year that drones had not caused "a huge number of civilian casualties." Depending on who you ask, however, the actual civilian body count may be as high as 832, as the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports.

Back in America, though, explanations offered to many of the country’s largest media outlets suggest that some people within the Obama administration are either not being truthful with reporters or else White House staffers themselves are largely uninformed.

In April 2010, an “internal CIA accounting” provided to the Washington Post suggested that “just over 20 civilians” had lost their lives to drone strikes in Pakistan since President Obama began his first term in January 2009. As recently as this May, however, the New York Times quoted a senior Obama administration official as saying that the number of civilians killed by drones under the president’s watch is in the “single digits.”

Another report published by McClatchy last year puts the number of civilians killed between August 2009 and August 2010 at “about 30.” To the New York Times, however, a CIA officer suggested that zero civilians had been executed between May 2010 and August 2011.

Taking into account another three separate drone articles that relied on government insiders for information, Elliott writes that, if the claims are true, “it implies that the government believes there were zero or almost zero civilian deaths between the beginning of 2008 and August 2009, and then again zero deaths between August 2010 and July 2011. Those periods comprise a total of 182 strikes.”

Analyzing three other accounts provided to the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN by government officials, Elliott notes, “it suggests that the majority of the 50 total civilian deaths occurred during the Bush administration — when the drone program was still in its infancy.”

Of course, if Obama officials say that the current administration wasn’t behind the bulk of civilian casualties, they have that covered with another explanation as well: earlier this month, the New York Times published an article that answers just how the White House handles drone statistics: all military-age males in and around targeted strike zone are considered combatants, not civilians, because, “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good."

Full report from RT  | 19 June, 2012

Blackwater guards finally face manslaughter charges?

Got away with a lesser charge?

RT | 06 June, 2012

The US Supreme Court ruled this week that it will not allow the four private security guards indicted in a 2007 Iraqi massacre to appeal charges related to the slaying.

Four former employees of Blackwater Worldwide — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball — will once again face criminal charges for their role in the September 16, 2007 killing that left 14 Iraqi civilians dead. Twenty others were wounded during the altercation, which erupted near Nisour Square in downtown Baghdad.

The Supreme Court weighed in this week to decide on whether or not to allow an appeal that could have meant the dismissal of manslaughter and weapons charges against the employees. A federal judge had previously ruled that the defendants’ Fifth Amendment right that protects them against self-incrimination was violated in the case because prosecutors used statements in the original trial that should not have been allowed in court. An appeals panel fought that decision, however, which brought the case all the way to the Supreme Court this week.

Bruce Bishop, an attorney for the defendants, claims that the government encouraged his clients to make statements in the immediate aftermath of the incident that were later used in court to charge them at a later date.

"The issue is of national importance," Bishop tells Reuters. "The privilege against self-incrimination is a fundamental and universal value in Anglo-American justice."

After Federal Judge Ricardo Urbina originally threw out the case on December 31, 2009, Blackwater reportedly compensated some of the victims’ families with $100,000 each, reports the Guardian. A federal appeals court picked up the case after, however, and spent months hearing closed-door testimonies before reinstating the charges in April 2011.

On the prosecutions part, federal attorneys say that they have enough evidence as is to continue with the case. That claim was enough for the Supreme Court to reject hearing the appeal this week. The country’s top justices made their decision on Monday without comment and now the four defendants will likely stand trial in the slaying.

A fifth guard, Nicholas Slatten, was previously let off the hook for an alleged role in the slaying. Jeremy Ridgeway, a sixth participant, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.

"None of these victims was an insurgent, and many were shot while inside of civilian vehicles that were attempting to flee," Slatten told investigators.

In the years since the Nisour Square massacre, Blackwater changed its name to Xe Service LLC and then Academi, under which it currently operates. Last year Academi CEO Tim Wright told Wired’s Danger Room, “As we make changes and they take root and we convince everyone they’re real … then the real proof in the pudding is convincing the government of Iraq and the U.S. government to let us do business in Iraq.”


original report :

the Question of Jewishness, Apartheid or Zionism?

Published on Jun 4, 2012 by aston79suara : Afshin Rattansi talk to Gilad Atzmon, Jewish novelist, journalist and saxophonist, about Lebanon, Palestine and censorship.