UPDATED: Xe spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell emailed The Huffington Post to respond: "Xe has strong internal and external document preservation controls and comprehensive policies to ensure we fulfill them. When the company was first accused of document destruction by these attorneys, outside counsel independently conducted a thorough investigation and found no support for any of those allegations. When pressed for provide specific information to support their allegations, plaintiffs' counsel was unable to do so."
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The families of three men killed in Iraq sued Blackwater yesterday, alleging that company employees wrongfully killed the men and then destroyed documents to hide the evidence. The private military company, now known as Xe, faces civil action in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District in Virginia. The case was originally filed in a California federal court in April.
The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, alleges that on Feb. 7, 2007, heavily armed Xe-Blackwater employees shot the three men, who worked as security guards for the Iraqi Media Network. Sabah Salman Hassoon, Azhar Abdullah Ali, and Nibrass Mohammed Dawood were killed in front of approximately 20 other Xe-Blackwater employees and although company supervisors were alerted, the shootings were not reported, according to the complaint.
Not only did the company fail to report the shootings, claim the plaintiffs, but also actively covered up the incident by "refusing to identify the shooters to Iraqi authorities and destroying documents and other evidence relating to this and other Xe-Blackwater shootings."
This is the latest in a string of lawsuits filed against the company since the start of the Iraq War, including suits by both Iraqi and U.S. families accusing the company of fraud and negligence, among other charges. The plaintiffs in the recent case claim that Xe-Blackwater continues to operate a company in Iraq called Falcon though company officials have denied any connection to Falcon in the past.
Xe spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell told Huffington Post that she was unfamiliar with the case.
According to the lawsuit, Hassoon, Ali and Dawood were manning their posts at the Iraqi Media Network across from the Iraqi Justice Ministry. After escorting a U.S. diplomat to a meeting at the ministry, Xe-Blackwater "shooters" took up positions on the roof and fired at Dawood for "no reason," according to the lawsuit. When Ali and Hassoon ran to the guard's assistance, they also came under fire. The document goes on to say that the Iraqi Army commander at the site, Captain Ahmed Thamir Abood, questioned the Xe-Blackwater employees at the time of the shootings, but the employees "joked amongst themselves, giving contradictory statements regarding to whom the captain should speak."
The lawsuit alleges that "Xe-Blackwater management refused to fire or discipline mercenaries who murdered innocent Iraqis," and accuses the company of war crimes.
Read the complaint here: