The hospital was too busy. Defense lawyers for the four veterans, who were working as contractors for the State Department at the time of the killings, argued that they had returned fire only after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. We are taking fire from insurgents and Iraqi police. [48] According to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised a "fair and transparent" investigation into the incident. I had never imagined that Trump or any other politician would affect American justice.". Blackwater has been renamed and falls under the Constellis group of companies, a risk management business formed in 2010. Mohammed had not been shot. Despite losing the empire in the nineties, as far as military power is concerned, Russia with its enormous arsenal of conventional as well as nuclear weapons still more or less equals the military power of the United States, as is obvious from the unfolding Ukraine war where all the NATO could do is watch it from distance, and not even attempting to enforce a no-fly zone lest the conflict spirals into a mutually destructive nuclear war. Erik Prince, chairman of the Prince Group, LLC and Blackwater USA, tesifies during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in 2007. pardon four Blackwater private security contractors, US announces troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Blackwater guards were firing indiscriminately. In his testimony, Prince noted that, "It seems the ballistics analysis was done to prove the guilt of the Americans, not to just try to identify what happened there." It looks at the rise of private security contractors such as Blackwater in the era of modern warfare. [41], On September 18, 2007, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said Blackwater is "not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq". Opinion | Trump's Most Disgusting Pardons - The New York Times The Blackwater mercenaries were among the most flagrant killers in Iraq but hardly unique. For those of you who are not aware, Erik Prince (Blackwater/Academi) personally sold to the CIA the concept of a mercenary army to conduct hybrid war ops and/or crypto-guerrilla war against Russia. [21]:116, During opening arguments for a criminal trial held in 2014, defense lawyers representing former Blackwater members of Raven 23 argued the men felt the approaching Kia was a credible threat as a possible car bomb, and opened fire in self-defense. Slatten, whom prosecutors said started the shooting, was sentenced to life in prison. "These are four innocent guys, and it is completely justified," Bill Coffield, a lawyer for Evan Liberty, told the AP. Liberty is one of four former Blackwater mercenaries pardoned by President Donald Trump in one of . Blackwater mercenary defends role in Iraq massacre after Trump pardon In 2014, four former government contractors who worked for Blackwater Worldwide, a security firm founded by Erik Prince an ally of Trump and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were convicted in federal court in Washington in connection with the killings. Almost everyone who was killed or injured was shot in cars, taxis, or buses. The massacre took place in 2007, when the four were working as guards for Blackwater, a private military contractor, on an assignment in Baghdad. The news shows the helicopter falling to the ground as it burns. FBI investigators who visited the scene in the following days described it as the My Lai massacre of Iraq a reference to the infamous slaughter of civilian villagers by US troops during the Vietnam war in which only one soldier was convicted. Rogers. He was ensured a fair trial and convicted for his crimes. They claimed they were fired on, but. A rocket grenade was fired into the car next to him. An Iraqi policeman went over to the car, possibly to help the passenger, but the vehicle kept moving and it looked to the guards as if the policeman was pushing the car towards the Blackwater TST. Says Guards Killed 14 Iraqis Without Cause", "Blackwater guards lose bid to appeal charges in Iraqi civilian shooting case", "U.S. troops in Iraq will need immunity: U.S. chief", "Jurors' Note Hints at Conviction in Blackwater Case", "Former Blackwater Guards Convicted in Iraq Shooting", "Shock And Dismay After Trump Pardons Blackwater Guards Who Killed 14 Iraqi Civilians", "Trump Pardons Two Russia Inquiry Figures and Blackwater Guards", "Trump pardon of Blackwater Iraq contractors violates international law - UN", "Iraqi Inquiry Says Shooting Was Unprovoked", "Blackwater guards fired unprovoked: Iraq police evidence", "Pentagon Dispatches Investigators to Iraq to Probe Private Security Contractors", "Joint Iraqi-U.S. review begins in wake of Blackwater firefight", "Blackwater faulted by U.S. military: report", "Iraq determined to rein in private security guards", "The Iraqi Account of the Killings [infographic]", "Former Blackwater Employee Sentenced to Life Imprisonment for Murder in 2007 Shooting at Nisur Square in Iraq", "US Lawyers for Blackwater Guards: 2007 Baghdad Shooting was Self-Defense", "From Errand to Fatal Shot to Hail of Fire to 17 Deaths", "Four Former Blackwater Employees Found Guilty of Charges in Fatal Nisur Square Shooting in Iraq", "Iraqi ministers back Blackwater shutdown - CNN.com", "Iraqi Report Says Blackwater Guards Fired First", "State Dept. When the first indictments were dismissed on New Years Eve in 2009, they were told that the prosecutions would continue. Nassar Hamza was 67 years old when he was shot and wounded in the arm. Five were charged with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and a weapons violation: Donald Ball, a former Marine from West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard, a former Marine from Knoxville, Tennessee; Evan Liberty, a former Marine from Rochester, New Hampshire; Nicholas Slatten, a former army sergeant from Sparta, Tennessee, and Paul Slough, an army veteran from Keller, Texas. Mohammed was a businessman dealing in auto salvage. Blackwater mercenary sentenced to life in prison - NationofChange Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) March 1, 2022. It wasnt. [80], On April 22, 2011, after closed-door testimony, a federal appeals-court panel revived the Justice Department's prosecution of the former Blackwater Worldwide guards by reinstating the manslaughter charges against the five men. Donald Trump has pardoned four security guards from the private military firm Blackwater who were serving jail sentences for killing 14 civilians including two children in Baghdad in 2007, a. courts. Boslego also said the attack had a negative effect on our mission, [an] adverse effect It made our relationship with the Iraqis in general more strained.. ", "After years of waiting, the victims finally saw justice served when these men were convicted," she said in an email. The majority of the Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq after the . It remains unclear whether the team member mistook the civilians for insurgents. Sequence of events triggering the Nisour Square massacre, Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, Private Security Company Association of Iraq, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, Inspector General of the U.S. State Department, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, "U.S. The incident was allegedly resolved only after another Blackwater contractor pointed his weapon at the man still firing and ordered him to stop. The State Department announced an American-Iraqi joint commission to investigate both the shooting and the broader issue of employing private security contractors. Dickinson says that the victims' families are likely to feel let down and abandoned by the U.S. government. Their bodies were beaten and burned, with their charred corpses then dragged through the city streets before being hanged over a bridge crossing the Euphrates River. He was shot through the roof of his car as the Blackwater convoy drove past firing down into traffic. And none of the I.P. Why Is Assange in Jail and Not Seymour Hersh? Raven 23 "returned defensive fire" and withdrew from Nisour Square with one of its BearCat vehicles in tow. The black-op of setting a building in the sprawling nuclear complex alight and then posting doctored video clips of Russian tanks shelling straight at the nuclear plant on social media, promptly verified as authentic by corporate media, was clearly the dirty work of covert saboteurs whove been advising and assisting Ukraines inept security forces and also taking an active part in combat operations in some of the hardest fought battles against Russias security forces north of Kyiv and at Kharkiv and Donbas. [14], On October 13, 2007, the FBI reported that it had concluded that at least 14 of the 17 Iraqis who died in the square had been killed without cause. [32] In response to the guards' killing of the Iraqi policeman, other Iraqi police officers began to fire at the Blackwater men, who communicated to the State Department operations center that they were under attack. Dec. 24, 2020 Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani with a photo of his 9-year-old son, Ali, who was killed by Blackwater. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBIs most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. The four were convicted at then VP Joe Biden's insistence, and were serving jail terms. Four Blackwater security guards convicted in 2014 of carrying out a massacre of Iraqi civilians, sparking an international outcry over the use of mercenaries in war . [8][98] A White House statement said the men had a "long history of service to the nation" as veterans of the US Armed Forces, and that there was strong support for the pardons from the public and elected officials. Mohammed was glad Saddams reign of terror was finally ending. [12] On October 4, 2007, the U.S. House passed a bill that would make all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones subject to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act[65] "I consider what the security company personnel have done is a terrorist act, as many civilians were martyred and wounded," said Hashem, 41, a father of five who was partially disabled and forced to retire after the incident. A. He was in the car next to Mohammed. Each time the criminal charges were seemed lost, the U.S. Department of Justice told them they were not forgotten that we would continue to pursue the convictions of those who committed the crimes against them. Blackwater is an American private military company . They left in 2011 but returned in 2014 after the Islamic State militant group overran large parts of the country. They claimed they were fired on, but prosecutors said the Blackwater guards opened fire first. [33], Three Blackwater guards who witnessed the incident later said that they believed the shootings were unjustified. "Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families," said Jelena Aparac, Chair . Now they'll go free. [84], The other four went on trial starting on June 17, 2014;[5] ten weeks of testimony and 28 days of jury deliberations resulted in convictions for all four men on October 22, 2014. Trump's pardon of Blackwater contractors convicted of massacre greeted Among the pardons made by President Trump this week, the pardon of four former guards for Blackwater has been regarded by some as particularly galling. Likewise, the civil case ran through North Carolina state court, was removed to federal court, and then sent back to state court. The report found that the use of contractors such as Blackwater was a "new form of mercenary activity" and illegal under international law; however, the United States is not a signatory of the 1989 UN Mercenary Convention banning the use of mercenaries. The key people in this have not spoken with investigators. Associated Press WASHINGTON Four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards were convicted and immediately jailed Wednesday for their roles in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisour Square. Trump's Blackwater Pardons Reveal Security Contractor - JURIST My clients assuredly feel ignored, mistreated, and used. Each step of the way, the U.S. legal system ensured that these men were given fair and just prosecutions. [89][90][91] The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's fractured per curiam decision first found that Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act authorized the prosecutions, over the partial dissent of Judge Janice Rogers Brown. [36], On September 19, as a result of the incident, the United States temporarily suspended all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. Blackwater mercenaries committed a massacre. [89][90][91] The panel also recommended that Slatten undergo a re-trial on the grounds that it was unjustifiable to try him with his co-defendants, and that he should have been tried separately. His sister was safe. Despite the public display of uncharacteristic valor by sporting military fatigues and flaunting images and video clips of soldiers proudly standing beside caches of MANPADS and Javelins on social media, Ukraines conscript army was so frightened following Russias military intervention that it wanted to surrender territory and opted instead for mounting guerrilla warfare by adopting hit-and-run tactics from the safety of border regions of Poland and Romania. U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the incident. Erik Prince, chair of the Prince Group LLC and Blackwater USA, holds up a picture showing the effect of a car bomb while testifying during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Oct. 2, 2007 in Washington, D.C. Mohammed was going to visit his sister and her children. The traffic circle, Nisour Square, was only a block away from one of the main entrance gates to Baghdads Green Zone. Erik Prince said that he didn't believe the FBI had fully investigated the sources of all the used bullets in Nisour Square, arguing that it would have been helpful if the defense had been in possession of a complete ballistics report. [54] He served one tour in Iraq before being hired as a Personal Security Specialist in Iraq. None of the bullets the lab had available could be matched to the rifles used by the guards. [37] A senior aide to al-Maliki said that three of the Blackwater guards were Iraqis and could be subject to prosecution. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most publicized US crimes of the 8-year Iraq war. [100] UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Marta Hurtado said that forgiveness "contributes to impunity and has the effect of encouraging others to commit such crimes in the future". [17], Just before noon on September 16, 2007, a car bomb exploded near the Izdihar Compound where US and Iraqi officials were meeting,[20]:547 and a 19-man Blackwater Tactical Support Team (TST) consisting of a convoy of four trucks, answering to the call sign "Raven 23", took up positions on the south side of Nisour Square to secure an evacuation route for the US officials and another Blackwater team providing security for them. Are they going to release me?". Ali was slumped over against the glass. The Blackwater mess has roiled Capitol Hill and shined light on the many questions surrounding the legal status, management, oversight and accountability of the private military force in Iraq,. "The ministry believes that this decision did not take into account the seriousness of the crime committed and was inconsistent with the U.S. administration's declared commitment to the values of human rights, justice, and the rule of law, and regrettably ignores the dignity of the victims," it said. Following Russias intervention in Ukraine, Germany alone hasproudly bragged[4] of dispatching caches of 500 US-made surface-to-air Stinger missiles and 2,700 Soviet-era, shoulder-fired Strelamissiles to Ukraines conscript military. During the litigation, an appeal was ongoing in the 4h Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. When Mohammed looked to his right, the driver of the car next to him shouted that the soldiers had just shot into another car in front of them. "Paul Slough and his colleagues didn't deserve to spend one minute in prison," Brian Heberlig, a lawyer for Slough, told The Associated Press. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they responded. "I'm really shocked. Machine gunfire tore through his body. My law firm received a call from an immigration attorney the next year seeking representation for the Blackwaters victims, and I was eventually retained to represent the Kinani family in a civil lawsuit against Blackwater, Prince, and various other Blackwater companies and, of course, the men who were charged and eventually convicted of murder, manslaughter, and weapons charges for their conduct. LONDON and BAGHDAD -- When news broke that Mohammed Kinani's son's killers, Blackwater private military contractors hired by the U.S. government in Baghdad, were pardoned Wednesday by President Trump, Kinani said it was like losing his 9-year-old boy all over again. Convoy Attacked in Baghdad, Sparking a Shootout", "3 Blackwater Guards Called Baghdad Shootings Unjustified", "Blackwater Denies Any Wrongdoing in Shooting Incident (Update1)", "Iraqi leader urges U.S. to cancel Blackwater contract", "Iraqi Investigators say Videotape Shows Blackwater Guards Fired Without Aggravation", "House Passes Bill That Would Hike Penalties for U.S. Security Contractors in Iraq", "Private Security Company Association Iraq", "Iraqi Government Disputes Blackwater USA's Version of Shooting", "Iraq battle was self-defense, security firm says", "FBI takes lead in probe over Blackwater crisis", "Blackwater most often shoots first, congressional report says", "Report: Blackwater Killings Unjustified", "From Texas to Iraq, and Center of Blackwater Case", No forensic match for ammo in Blackwater shooting, "The Associated Press: APNewsBreak: Blackwater founder questions FBI work", "Overcoming post-colonial myopia: A call to recognize and regulate private military companie"s, Judge Advocate General's Corps, U.S. Army, "Wounded Iraqis: 'No one did anything' to provoke Blackwater", "Blackwater incident witness: 'It was hell', Family Members of Slain Iraqis Sue Blackwater USA for Deadly Baghdad Shooting, "Blackwater Verdict a U.S. 'Snub' of Iraqi Leader Nouri al-Maliki: Kayhan, Islamic Republic of Iran", "White House: Contractor bill would have 'intolerable' effects", "Blackwater settles Nisoor Square lawsuit", "5 Blackwater guards face manslaughter charges", "Blackwater Guard in Secret Deal to Testify in Massacre Case", "US judge sets trial in 2010 for Blackwater guards", "Appeals court revives Blackwater shooting case", "US judge dismisses charges in Blackwater Iraq killings", "Reopening of Blackwater Case Confuses Iraqi Victims", "Biden Says U.S. Will Appeal Blackwater Case Dismissal (Published 2010)", "ICD - Slough et al. Nicky Woolf in New York. His mother also suffered a stroke, he added. The White House further stated that the Court of Appeals "ruled that additional evidence should have been presented at Mr Slatten's trial", and recently that prosecutors said "that the lead Iraqi investigator, who prosecutors relied heavily on to verify that there were no insurgent victims and to collect evidence, may have had ties to insurgent groups himself". He was told that he had to go to a neurologic hospital on the other side of Baghdad. President Donald Trump's decision to pardon four Blackwater private security contractors convicted of a massacre in Baghdad has been met with fury by the victims' families in Iraq. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. "[29], On October 4, 2007, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it would be taking the lead in the investigation of the shooting incident. https://t.co/O88HKyb3wd, Kevin Reed | wsws.org (@KevinReedWSWS) March 4, 2022. President Donald Trump pardoned four former Blackwater mercenaries on Tuesday who had been convicted for their role in the Nisour Square massacre that left 14 people dead in Baghdad in 2007. That notion has now been shown to be false, Dickinson says. Everything was eerily quiet. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - On Tuesday, Trump the Mad pardoned 4 Blackwater mercenaries who killed 14 Iraqi civilians, including a nine-year-old boy, with indiscriminate fire at Nisour Square in downtown Baghdad on September 14, 2007. The result of the long legal battle is that each man was ensured a fair trial, free of partiality and without unjust favor. "They prefer animals over humans, and then they talk about human rights, justice and humanity," said an Iraqi man whose brother was among those killed in 2007. He was left with shrapnel in his body from the rocket launched grenade that was fired into his vehicle as he escaped. But he knew he was surviving as he kept yelling for the children in the back of his SUV to stay down. He suffered from his wounds for over a year until he died from a brain injury. The man that just spoken to him was dead. This evidentiary use of tainted information constitutes yet another Kastigar violation. In fact, private military contractors in close coordination and consultation with covert operators from CIA and Western intelligence agencies are not only training Ukraines conscript forces in the use of caches of Stingers and Javelins provided by Germany and the rest of the European nations as military assistance to Ukraine but are also directing the whole defense strategy of Ukraine by taking an active part in combat operations in some of the most hard-fought battles against Russias security forces north of Kyiv and at Kharkiv and Donbas. In the sheer desperation to inflict maximum material damage to Russias security forces, however, NATO appears to have breached its own long-standing convention of curbing the proliferation of anti-aircraft munitions. They started out as a private security firm providing training support to law enforcement, the justice department, and military organizations and received their first contract from the United States government in 2000 after the bombing of the USS Cole. [72] A sixth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway of California, struck a deal with prosecutors on December 4, 2008 and pleaded guilty to one count each of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, and aiding and abetting,[72][3] and agreed to testify against the other five men. Trump Just Pardoned Those Convicted Killers", "Pardons in killings of Iraqi civilians stir angry response", "Chief of Blackwater Defends His Employees", "Tracing the Paths of 5 Who Died in a Storm of Gunfire", "Blackwater Execs Remain Free as Guards Convicted for Killing 14 Iraqis in Massacre", Use of white phosphorus by the United States, United States and the International Criminal Court, A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, "The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time", AfghanIraqi Freedom Memorial (Salem, Oregon), The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nisour_Square_massacre&oldid=1141803510, Violent non-state actor incidents in Asia, People convicted of murder by the United States federal government, Pages using embedded infobox templates with the title parameter, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 26 February 2023, at 22:05. Constellis did not immediately respond to requests for comment. ", "By investigating these crimes and completing legal proceedings, the US complied with its obligations under international law," she added. [97], On December 22, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump granted full presidential pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each. Supporters of the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide had lobbied for the pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished. Former Blackwater guards sentenced for massacre of unarmed Iraqi
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