Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Four former Blackwater security guards were found guilty Wednesday in the 2007 shootings of more than 30 Iraqis in Baghdad, and a federal judge ordered them immediately to jail.

In an overwhelming victory for prosecutors, a jury found Nicholas Slatten guilty of first-degree murder. The three other three guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were found guilty of multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and gun charges.

The four men had been charged with a combined 33 counts in the shootings and the jury was able to reach a verdict on all of them, with the exception of three charges against Heard. The prosecution agreed to drop those charges.

The outcome after a summerlong trial and weeks of jury deliberation stunned the defense.

David Schertler, a lawyer for Heard, said “the verdict is wrong, it’s incomprehensible. We’re devastated. We’re going to fight it every step of the way. We still think we’re going to win.”

The shootings on Sept. 16, 2007, caused an international uproar over the role of defense contractors in urban warfare.

The State Department hired Blackwater to protect American diplomats in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, and elsewhere in the country. Blackwater convoys of four heavily armored vehicles operated in risky environments where car bombs and attacks by insurgents were common.

Slatten was charged with first-degree murder; the others were charged with voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and gun charges.

The case was mired in legal battles for years, making it uncertain whether the defendants would ever be tried.

The trial focused on the killings of 14 Iraqis and the wounding of 17 others. During an 11-week trial, prosecutors summoned 72 witnesses, including Iraqi victims, their families and former colleagues of the defendant Blackwater guards.

There was sharp disagreement over the facts in the case.

The defendants’ lawyers said there was strong evidence the guards were targeted with gunfire from insurgents and Iraqi police, leading the guards to shoot back in self-defense. Federal prosecutors said there was no incoming gunfire and that the shootings by the guards were unprovoked.

The prosecution focused on the defendants’ intent, contending that some of the Blackwater guards harbored a low regard and deep hostility toward Iraqi civilians.

The guards, the prosecution said, held “a grave indifference” to the death and injury that their actions probably would cause Iraqis. Several former Blackwater guards testified that they had been generally distrustful of Iraqis, based on experience the guards said they had had in being led into ambushes.

Prosecutors said that from a vantage point inside his convoy’s command vehicle, Slatten aimed his SR-25 sniper rifle through a gun portal, killing the driver of a stopped white Kia sedan, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y.

At the trial, two Iraqi traffic officers and one of the shooting victims testified the car was stopped at the time the shots were fired. The assertion that the car was stopped supported the prosecution argument that the shots were unwarranted.

Defense lawyers pressed their argument that other Blackwater guards — not Slatten — fired the first shots at the Kia sedan and that they did so only after the vehicle moved slowly toward the convoy, posing what appeared to be a threat to the Blackwater guards’ safety.

Once the shooting started, hundreds of Iraqi citizens ran for their lives.

It was “gunfire coming from the left, gunfire coming from the right,” prosecutor Anthony Asuncion told the jury in closing arguments.

One of the government witnesses in the case, Blackwater guard Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to killing the driver’s mother, who died in the passenger seat of the white Kia next to her son.

The maximum sentence for conviction of first-degree murder is life imprisonment. The gun charges carry mandatory minimum prison terms of 30 years. The maximum prison term for involuntary manslaughter is eight years; for attempted manslaughter it is seven years.

(OTTAWA, Ontario) — Police and witnesses say a gunman has shot a Canadian soldier standing guard at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

Witnesses also said the gunman entered Parliament and shots rang out. Royal Canadian Mounted Police warned people in downtown Ottawa to stay away from windows and rooftops.

The shooting, which happened shortly before 10 a.m., comes just two days after two Canadian soldiers were run over — and one of them killed — in Quebec by a man with jihadist sympathies.

Earlier: Police say a soldier standing guard at the National War Memorial has been shot by an unknown gunman.

Ottawa police confirmed they had a call at 9:52 a.m. Wednesday with a report of shots fired, and witnesses reported seeing a gunman running toward Parliament Hill, which is under lockdown. Others on the Hill told Canadian Press they heard shots being fired in several different corridors.

The top spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Harper was safe and had left Parliament Hill.

Emergency responders are still on the scene and paramedics took the wounded soldier away in an ambulance.

The incident comes just two days after two Canadian soldiers were run over — and one of them killed — in Quebec by a man with jihadist sympathies.

(WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio) — An Ohio man detained for nearly half a year in North Korea has landed back home.

Officials say a plane carrying Jeffrey Fowle landed Wednesday morning at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton.

The State Department announced Tuesday that the 56-year-old Miamisburg resident had been released. The news came about six months after he was taken into custody after leaving a Bible at a nightclub. Christian evangelism is considered a crime in North Korea.

He had been awaiting trial — the only one of three Americans held by Pyongyang who had not been convicted of charges.

The two others were each sentenced to years in North Korean prisons after court trials that lasted no more than 90 minutes. The three Americans entered North Korea separately.

(CINCINNATI) — News that an Ohio man had been freed from North Korea after being detained there for nearly six months triggered the same response in his wife and former co-workers: Delight.

Jeffrey Fowle’s wife cried out with joy, the family’s attorney said Tuesday. And a manager in the suburban Dayton city where Fowle formerly worked said they were “delighted to hear the news.”

The State Department announced Tuesday that the 56-year-old Miamisburg resident was released nearly a half-year after he was taken into custody after leaving a Bible at a nightclub. He had been awaiting trial.

Attorney Timothy Tepe said Fowle was able to later call his wife himself on his way home. He was expected to arrive in Ohio on Wednesday, his former employer said in a statement.

Two other Americans who have been convicted of crimes in North Korea are still being held.

There was no immediate explanation for the release of Fowle, who was quickly whisked to the U.S. territory of Guam before heading back to his wife and three children.

Relations between Washington and Pyongyang, never warm, are at a particularly low point, and the U.S. has sought unsuccessfully for months to send a high-level representative to North Korea to negotiate acquittals for all three men.

Moraine, the city where Fowle worked as a streets department employee, terminated his employment last month.

“We’re delighted to hear the news and look forward to him returning to the community and his family,” David Hicks, Moraine’s city manager, said Tuesday. He didn’t discuss Fowle’s employment.

The Dayton Daily News reported last month that the city said Fowle’s termination included $70,000 in severance pay and the ability to be reinstated.

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said Fowle was seen by doctors and appeared to be in good medical health. She declined to give more details about his release except to thank the government of Sweden, which has an embassy in Pyongyang, for its “tireless efforts.”

Harf would not say whether any American officials had intervened directly with the North Koreans.

Fowle was flown out of North Korea on a U.S. military jet which was spotted at Pyongyang’s international airport Tuesday by two Associated Press journalists.

There was no immediate comment from the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea and strongly warns American citizens against traveling to the country.

Fowle arrived there on April 29 and was arrested in May for leaving a Bible at the nightclub. Christian evangelism is considered a crime in North Korea.

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Jakes reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists Eric Talmadge and Maye-E Wong in Pyongyang, North Korea, and Deb Riechmann and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

As of June 30, 2014, the U.S. had spent approximately $7.6 billion on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan

(KABUL, Afghanistan) — Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan grew to an all-time high in 2013 despite America spending more than $7 billion to fight it over the past decade, a U.S. report showed on Tuesday.

Federal auditors SIGAR reported that Afghan farmers grew an unprecedented 209,000 hectares of the poppy in 2013, blowing past the previous peak of 193,000 hectares in 2007.

As of June 30, 2014, the report said, the United States had spent approximately $7.6 billion on counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan.

One factor for the surge was affordable deep-well technology, which over the past decade turned 200,000 hectares of desert in southwestern Afghanistan into arable land much of which is now being used for poppy cultivation.

Nangarhar province in the east, and other provinces, once declared “poppy free,” have seen a resurgence in cultivation. Nangarhar had been considered a model for successful counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics efforts and was deemed “poppy free” by the U.N. in 2008. It however saw a fourfold increase in opium poppy cultivation between 2012 and 2013.

An Afghan government official says that Taliban and opium smugglers are fighting for the income of opium in different parts of the country, while cultivation takes place mostly in the south and southwest where insurgents are highly active and the government has little influence.

“The recent fights in Helmand and other provinces of the country are in fact the fight against opium,” Afghan Counter Narcotics Minister Mubarez Rashedi told the country’s upper house of parliament. “The big opium smugglers alongside the Taliban are fighting against the Afghan government.”

(WASHINGTON) — Jeffrey Fowle, one of three Americans being held in North Korea, has been released, the State Department said Tuesday.

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said Fowle was on his way home Tuesday after negotiators left Pyongyang. Fowle is from Miamisburg, Ohio. Harf said the U.S. is still trying to free Americans Matthew Miller and Kenneth Bae.

Associated Press journalists in Pyongyang spotted the U.S. government plane at the capital’s international on Tuesday.

Washington has tried for months to send a high-level envoy to North Korea to seek release of the three men.

Analysts say North Korea has previously used detained Americans as leverage in its standoff with the U.S. over its nuclear and missile programs, a charge that Pyongyang denies.