Source:
APWASHINGTON - Democrats criticized the Bush administration Tuesday for giving immunity to Blackwater USA bodyguards, calling the move a failure to hold the security contractors responsible for the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians.
The State Department, whose investigators initially promised to shield the bodyguards' statements in the criminal inquiry of the Sept. 16 shootings, maintained that any lawbreakers "must be held to account" as a result of the inquiry that has since been taken over by the Justice Department and FBI.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, who sits on two Senate panels that oversee the State Department and the Justice Department, called the immunity deal an example of "the amnesty administration."
The offer for limited immunity has delayed the government's criminal inquiry of the shootings that enraged the Iraqi government, and threatens to derail prosecution as investigators seek other evidence from the crime scene now six weeks cold.
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