Ex-Blackwater guard gets life in prison for 2007 massacre

A former Blackwater private security guard was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison after a retrial on murder charges for his role in the notorious 2007 massacre of unarmed civilians in Baghdad. Nicholas Slatten was convicted in December of first-degree murder by a federal jury in US District Court in Washington, the second time he had been found guilty on the charges. Slatten was convicted of murdering Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y, 19, an aspiring doctor who was one of more than a dozen civilians killed by guards of the private security group Blackwater in Baghdad’s Nisour Square on September 16, 2007.