Two contractors who worked for Paravant, a subsidiary of Xe, the new name of Blackwater, have been charged with murder.

The charges were announced by federal prosecutors and consisted of two counts of second degree murder and one count of attempted murder. All the charges were related to an incident involving four Paravant contractors in May of last year. The contractors were allegedly involved in a shooting that led to the deaths of two Afghan civilians and the wounding of one in Kabul.

The four contractors are Christopher Drotleff, Justin Cannon, Steven McClain and Armando Hamid. They were in Afghanistan to assist in the training of Afghan troops by the U.S. Army. Only Drotleff and Cannon were charged.

The men were terminated by Paravant after the incident, citing that they were in violation of the company’s alcohol policy. Xe also released the following statement on Thursday, saying that it “immediately and fully cooperated with the government’s investigation of this tragic incident and terminated the individuals involved for violating company policy”.

The contractors themselves, though, paint a different picture. According to Steven McClain, the shootout occurred after one of the two vehicles being driven by the contractors was rammed into by another car. They reportedly got out of their car to help their companions, and said that the car that hit them did a U-turn and headed back at them, prompting them to think that they were under attack – so they fired at the vehicle.

Contrary to the reason for their termination, they allegedly had not been drinking at the time of the incident and had not had a drink since their arrival in the area the previous November.

Blackwater contractors, though, have been named in other lawsuits, and have been accused of “widespread illegal activity” and “fostering a culture of lawlessness”.

A lawyer, Daniel J. Callahan, however, was quoted with the following statement in May: “We feel that Blackwater wanted to shift the blame from Blackwater itself to these men as if they were acting on a lark… off duty, with weapons, weapons of their own, and while drinking. And I think the intent is to use these men as scapegoats.”