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Ex-Blackwater guards charged in Afghan deaths
A Virginia Beach man was arrested Thursday on murder charges stemming from an incident last year in Afghanistan, where he was working for a subsidiary of Xe, the private military company formerly known as Blackwater.
Christopher Drotleff, 29, is one of two former Xe contractors charged in the May 5 incident, in which two Afghans were killed and a third was wounded. The other former contractor, Justin Cannon, 27, was arrested in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he lives.
The murder charges come a week after a federal judge in Washington tossed out manslaughter charges against five other former Blackwater contractors who were involved in a 2007 shooting incident in Iraq.