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Orchestrated tales in ex-Blackwater guards’ trial?

By Pete Yost
Published June 21, 2014 4:03pm ET
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Orchestrated tales in ex-Blackwater guards’ trial?
FILE -This Dec. 13, 2008 file photo shows victims and their families during a meeting with a U.S. prosecutors in Baghdad, Iraq, to discuss the case against the Blackwater Worldwide guards indicted in the fatal September 2007 shootings of 14 Iraqis in the Baghdad's Nisoor Square. The carnage turned out to be the darkest episode of contractor violence during the war and inflamed anti-American feelings around the world. The trial, which began June 11, 2014, and is expected to last months, could feature the largest group of foreign witnesses ever to travel to the U.S. to participate in a criminal trial, according to the Justice Department. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File) | Khalid Mohammed

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense lawyers for the ex-Blackwater security guards accused of killing 14 Iraqis in Baghdad nearly seven years ago are raising the possibility that prosecution witnesses, with direction from Iraqi law enforcement investigators, have orchestrated their stories.

The defense has been bedeviled by the fact that no one has come forward to support its self-defense theory — that the guards acted because they were under attack.

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