Justice: Blackwater Case Should Have Gone Forward

The Justice Department has told a federal appeals court that there was more than enough untainted evidence to justify a trial for five Blackwater Worldwide guards involved in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad.

In court papers seeking to reinstate criminal charges, the department asserts that some of the evidence tainted by immunized statements in the case was harmless and did not justify scuttling the manslaughter charges against the guards.

In December, a federal judge dismissed the case against the security guards, who had opened fire on a crowded Baghdad street.

Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq.