Blackwater suit ends 7 years after deaths

Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C.

Days after the last U.S. troops left Iraq, a federal appeals court ended a lawsuit over an episode that produced one of the more disturbing images of the war: the grisly killings of four Blackwater security contractors and the hanging of a pair of their bodies from a bridge in Fallujah.

Families of the victims reached a confidential settlement with the company’s corporate successor, Arlington, Va.-based Academi, and the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the suit last week. The settlement was first reported Friday by The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va.

The deal ends the families’ hopes that a public trial would expose the events that led to Iraqi insurgents killing the four contractors in 2004 and hanging two of their corpses, said Jason Helvenston of Orlando, Fla., brother of slain Blackwater guard Stephen “Scott” Helvenston.

Images from the scene flashed around the world and triggered a massive U.S. military attack on Fallujah that featured street-by-street fighting.

“The lawsuit coming to an end is no surprise to me whatsoever. It was clear that this was going to be a cover-up from the beginning,” Helvenston said Friday. “You just feel the injustice of this long enough, and see that these people are just so evil, all you can do is pray to God that he’ll take care of it, because that’s all you’ve got left.”

Helvenston, who was not a party to the lawsuit, said he read parts of the settlement but doesn’t know all the details. He said the deal includes the company paying the families’ attorney fees and a small death-benefit to the heirs. Scott Helvenston’s ex-wife, Patricia Irby of Virgina Beach, Va., confirmed those details but added how much their son and daughter will get hasn’t yet been determined.

“I’m glad it’s over. It’s been a hard fight, and the lawyers did a phenomenal job,” she said Friday.