Blackwater's Prince sued for Iraq crime

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD/CNN) - Blackwater founder and former CEO Erik Prince is accused of murder and other serious crimes in Iraq, according to court documents filed this week.

CNN is reporting "the sworn affidavits by an ex-Marine who joined Blackwater and another employee -- listed in the documents as 'John Doe No. 1' and 'John Doe No. 2' -- are part of a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Virginia against Prince on behalf of Iraqi families who say they lost loved ones at the hands of his company.

The company had a security contract for operations in Iraq under the U.S. State Department until May, when the federal government declined to renew the contract. The decision did not affect other contracts Blackwater has with the State Department, a senior State department official told CNN earlier this year.

Several of the plaintiffs are connected to a September 2007 shooting incident in Baghdad in which the Iraqi government says security guards, then employed by Blackwater, fired upon and killed 17 Iraqi civilians.

The affidavits by the two witnesses, who did not want to be identified in the court documents filed Monday for fear of retaliatory "violence," paint a menacing portrait of Prince, who recently resigned from his company, recently renamed Xe."