Immunity Deals Offered to Blackwater Guards

WASHINGTON, Oct. Twenty-Nine — State Department research workers offered security guards unsusceptibility during an enquiry into last month's deathly shot of 17 Iraqis in Bagdad — a potentially serious fact-finding trip that could perplex attempts to prosecute the company's employees involved in the episode, authorities functionaries said Monday. Range of War Related

The State Department research workers from the agency's fact-finding arm, the Agency of Diplomatic Security, offered the unsusceptibility grants even though they did not have got the authorization to make so, the functionaries said. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who make have got such as authority, had no progress cognition of the arrangement, they added.

Most of the guards who took portion in the Sept. Sixteen shot were offered what functionaries described as limited-use immunity, which intends that they were promised that they would not be prosecuted for anything they said in their interviews with the government as long as their statements were true. The unsusceptibility offerings were first reported Monday by The Associated Press.

The functionaries who spoke of the unsusceptibility trades have got been briefed on the matter, but agreed to speak about the agreement only on the status of namelessness because they had not been authorized to discourse a continuing criminal investigation.

The precise legal position of the unsusceptibility offering is unclear. Those who have got been offered unsusceptibility would look likely to asseverate that their statements are legally protected, even as some authorities functionaries state that unsusceptibility was never officially sanctioned by the Justice Department.

Spokesmen for the State and Justice Departments would not notice on the matter. A State Department functionary said, "If there's any truth to this story, then the determination was made without audience with senior functionaries in Washington."

A spokeswoman for Blackwater, Anne E. Tyrrell, said, "It would be inappropriate for me to notice on the investigation."

The unsusceptibility trades were an unwelcome surprise at the Justice Department, which was already grappling with the cardinal legal inquiry of whether any prosecutions could take topographic point involving American civilians in .

Blackwater employees and other civilian contractors cannot be tried in military courts, and it is ill-defined what American criminal laws might cover criminal Acts committed in a warfare zone. Americans are immune from Iraki law under a directive signed by the United States business authorization in 2003 that have not been repealed by the Iraki Parliament.

A State Department reappraisal panel sent to look into the shots concluded that there was no footing for holding non-Defense Department contractors answerable under United States law and urged United States Congress and the disposal to turn to the problem.

The House overwhelmingly passed a measure this calendar month that would do such as contractors apt under a law known as the Military Extraterritorial Legal Power Act. The Senate is considering a similar measure.

Some legal analysts have got suggested that the Blackwater lawsuit could be prosecuted through the act, which lets the extension of federal law to civilians supporting military operations.

But trying a criminal lawsuit in federal tribunal necessitates warrants that no 1 have tampered with the evidence. Because a suspect have got the right to cross-examine witnesses, foreign witnessers would have to be transported to the United States.

Several legal experts said grounds gathered by Iraki research workers and turned over to the Americans, even within days, would probably be suspect.

Another law that may be applicable screens contractors in countries that could be defined as American territory, like a military alkali or the Green Zone. But the Blackwater security contractors in the Sept. Sixteen shots were in neither place.

The authorities have transferred the probe from the diplomatic service to the , which have begun reinterviewing Blackwater employees without any grant of unsusceptibility in an attempt to piece independent grounds of possible wrongdoing.

Richard J. Griffin, the head of the Agency of Diplomatic Security, resigned last week, in a going that appeared to be related to jobs with his supervising of Blackwater contractors.

In addition, the Justice Department reassigned the probe from public public prosecutors in the criminal division who had read the statements the State Department had taken under the offering of unsusceptibility to prosecutors in the national security division who had no cognition of the statements.

Such a measure is usually taken to continue the government's ability to reason later in tribunal that any lawsuit it have brought was made independently and did not utilize information gathered under a promise that it would not be used in a criminal trial.

The episode began as a convoy carrying American diplomatists and staffed by Blackwater guards approached Nisour Square in Bagdad at noon on a Sunday. A 2nd Blackwater convoy, positioned on the crowded foursquare in progress to command traffic, opened fire, killing 17 people and stabbing 24.

Blackwater's original statement on the shot said the company's guards had "acted lawfully and appropriately in response to a hostile attack," and initial averments by the State Department stated that the convoy had come up under small-arms fire.

But subsequent business relationships from witnessers and Iraki research workers indicated that the convoy had not been attacked and that the Blackwater guards fired indiscriminately around the square. American soldiers investigating the scene afterward also establish no grounds of an attack.

F.B.I. agents have got been at the Blackwater chemical compound in the Green Zone interviewing guards involved in the shooting.

Immunity is intended to protect the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination piece still giving research workers the ability to garner evidence. Usually, people suspected of law-breakings are not given unsusceptibility and such as grants are not made until after the likely suspects are identified. Even then, public prosecutors often confront serious obstructions in bringing a prosecution in lawsuits in which suspects have got been immunized.

Toilet M. Broder contributed reporting.