BAGHDAD: All but one of the families of 17 Iraqis killed in a 2007 shooting by US security guards have accepted compensation from the Blackwater firm, a lawyer wounded in the attack said today.

Confirmation of the payouts comes less than two weeks after a US federal judge dismissed charges against five guards of the American private security firm accused of killing the civilians in an unprovoked attack.

“All of the families of the dead agreed, except for one family,” said 42-year-old lawyer Hassan Jabbar Salman, who himself was injured in an arm, the chest and legs in the attack.

He said the family of each person killed in the Nisur Square shooting in central Baghdad was offered 100,000 dollars, while those wounded received between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars. Salman declined to specify how much he was to receive in compensation, which has yet to be deposited in his bank account.

Investigators said shortly after the September 16, 2007, shooting that Salman’s car alone was hit with 73 bullets.

“I agreed to drop the civil complaint, but the criminal complaint, US prosecutors are

still handling it, and they have

invited me to attend the trial,”

he told AFP. Salman said a

Blackwater lawyer met in late November with victims’ families in Istanbul, where the settlement was reached.

Blackwater, which has since been renamed Xe, took the families’ signatures and fingerprints and later also recorded video statements of them accepting the terms of the settlement, he said.

Since then, however, nine of the families have petitioned the office of Khaled al-Attiya, parliament’s deputy speaker, for the deals to be nullified, saying they were forced to accept the deal under pressure.

“We were afraid, we signed the documents under duress,” said 45-year-old Mehdi Abdul Khaddhar, a day labourer who lost one of his eyes in the shooting. “We were pressured.”

The sole family member

who has not accepted a settlement, Haitham al-Rubaie, said he had turned down Blackwater’s repeated offers.

“I demand to prosecute them in a criminal court for the disaster they carried out,” said the medical doctor, who lost his wife and a son in the shooting.

“I’ve had enough of them underestimating the value of Iraqi blood.” Salman said that Rubaie had demanded 200 million dollars in compensation, while the doctor confirmed he wanted financial compensation but declined to specify a figure.