Blackwater ‘paid $1m in bribes’ after 2007 shooting

The further cost of America's adventure in Iraq has come to the surface with former Blackwater officials confirming the company tried to buy the silence of Iraqi officials after the notorious Nisour Square incident in 2007 during which Blackwater security guards shot dead 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

Blackwater allegedly paid more than $1m in bribes, said the New York Times, sending the money from Amman, Jordan, where Blackwater, now renamed Xe, maintains an operations hub.

As the prime contractor in Iraq providing security at the US Embassy in Baghdad, Blackwater was granted immunity from Iraqi law until late 2008. But latest revelations could cause the firm, founded and led by alleged militant Christian fundamentalist, crusader and car parts heir Erik Prince, to lose the last of its contracts.

No private security is as closely associated with Iraq conflict - or has profited so fully. Since 2001, Blackwater has won more than $1.5bn in US government contracts, including work on the covert CIA drone programme operating inside Pakistan and a now-defunct programme to assassinate leaders of al-Qaeda.

Three months ago, two former employees alleged in a US court that Blackwater was a party to murder, weapons smuggling, and the deliberate slaughter of civilians. Prince, they said, "intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades".

Despite being involved in a dozen loose-triggered incidents, the shootings in Nisour Square remain Blackwater's most controversial. On September 16, 2007, a company convoy fired on Iraqis at an intersection, even launching grenades into a nearby school. Five Blackwater guards involved in the shooting are due in court in February on manslaughter charges. A sixth has pled guilty.

But Blackwater has never faced criminal charges in the case; evidence of bribery may now change that.  However, it may be too late for the firm: in March 2009, the Iraqis said that Blackwater would not be awarded a license to operate. Two months later, the US replaced the company with a competing outfit, Triple Canopy. ·