[55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. [37] A senior aide to al-Maliki said that three of the Blackwater guards were Iraqis and could be subject to prosecution. He was told that he had to go to a neurologic hospital on the other side of Baghdad. They claimed they were fired on, but prosecutors said the Blackwater guards opened fire first. The Iraqi government condemned the pardons, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying in a statement late on Wednesday that it would follow up with the U.S. through diplomatic channels to urge a reconsideration. Or should I say Why is he still breathing? The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most publicized US crimes of the 8-year Iraq war. That day changed my life forever. Monday's sentencing was. 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. 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. 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. "It was obviously excessive", a U.S. military official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Washington Post. That changed yesterday with President Donald Trumps pardons. I know that each of them placed great faith in the U.S. legal system. The committee was co-chaired by Abd al Qadir, the Iraqi Minister of Defense, and Patricia A. Butenis, the Charg d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. [83], In September 2013, the charges against Ball were dropped. As Mohammed held his sons hand, he convulsed and died in the back of the ambulance. Blackwater Mercenaries: NATOs Secret Weapon in Ukraine War, VT RADIO: Alternative Foreign Policy Talk, Khazarian Mafia at War: The Jewish Oligarch Who Planned the Terror, Russias Future Predicted by Well-Known Christian Saints, Most Front-Line Ukrainian Soldiers Killed Within 4 Hours, How Russia managed to survive Western sanctions, How War Began The Genesis of NATOs Coup in Ukraine , From Global Warming Denial to Holocaust Denial, On this day in 1940, Woody Guthrie writes This Land Is, Former U.S. President Carter to Hospice, Will Pariah Trump Attend State, Dr. Fauci Admits COVID Shots Didnt Have A Chance Of Controlling. Mahde Shamke was 25 years old and driving a taxi to support his parents and siblings. When the Blackwater contractors were finally convicted seven years later in 2014, that was a sign of relief, but you needed political will for that. [4] In 2014, four Blackwater employees were tried[5] and convicted in U.S. federal court; one of murder, and the other three of manslaughter and firearms charges;[6] all four convicted were controversially pardoned[7] by President Donald Trump in December 2020,[8] in violation of international law. A former private military guard has been convicted of first degree murder by a court in Washington after taking part in a mass killing of unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007. "Before he died, he went crazy as he used to go out into the street and whenever he saw a young man, he imagined that he was Mahdi," he said. Again, I knew my clients would be pleased to know that justice had been served and their rights had been protected. A federal district court judge sentenced four former Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries to lengthy prison terms on Monday for their role in the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, Iraq in 2007. In his meetings with the high-ups in the US national security agencies, Erik Prince reportedly obtained a gentlemans promise, though without any documentary assurances due to the secretive nature of the Faustian pact, that he and his associates would not be held legally liable for the dirty work they do in the Ukraine proxy war. The Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul stated that the killings were unprovoked. 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. [36] Several Iraqi and American investigations have been conducted into the incident. 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. 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. [59] (The Protocol makes no distinction between defensive and offensive actions, but the U.S. does make such a distinction, in that it does not regard defensive actions by security guards to be combat. [1] Russian forces seize huge Ukrainian nuclear plant, fire extinguisher: https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/top-wrap-1-europes-largest-nuclear-power-plant-fire-after-russian-attack-mayor-2022-03-04/. They left in 2011 but returned in 2014 after the Islamic State militant group overran large parts of the country. "Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians", 23 December 2020. Supporters of the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide had lobbied for the pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished. [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. The only way these men could be brought to justice was in the United States. [34], In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Blackwater's rights to conduct work in Iraq were temporarily suspended. These convictions happened under the Obama Administration. "These are four innocent guys, and it is completely justified," Bill Coffield, a lawyer for Evan Liberty, told the AP. He never received treatment. Likewise, the civil case ran through North Carolina state court, was removed to federal court, and then sent back to state court. [16] The FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause. 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. U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the incident. On Tuesday, President Trump pardoned 15 people, including Dustin Heard (from left), Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten and Paul Slough, the four former government contractors convicted for a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that left more than a dozen Iraqi civilians dead. Nicky Woolf in New York. [24] The driver of the Kia was shot once in the head by a Blackwater contractor and was killed. Again, the result was the civil legal system exhausting every defense afforded to Blackwater and the men. December 23, 2020 at 2:57 pm. Six of my Blackwater brethren contractors are on the helicopter going to Tikrit. [43], The Private Security Company Association of Iraq, in a document last updated on July 3, 2007, listed Blackwater as not having a license to operate in Iraq despite their attempts to apply for one. The Associated Press contributed to this report. [6][85][86] Jurors sided with prosecutors' contention that the shooting was a criminal act, not a battlefield encounter gone wrong. In the middle of the attack, Mohammed could not understand why this man lying dead was a target. "The victims' families finally saw some measure of justice when these men were convicted in 2014 and sentenced to prison. More than 3,000 troops remain in Iraq, according to defense officials, with a drawdown scheduled for January. A State Department employee who was walking into the department's Baghdad operations center on the day of the incident heard a radio call from the convoy: "Contact, contact, contact! The Nisour Square massacre was one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. NPR reports that sometime after the Al-Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, where 17 sailors were killed, Blackwater won a $46 million contract from the U.S government for "training sailors in counterterrorism." After the September 11th attacks, Blackwater expanded their security-related work . The ones who were killed on the street were shot running for their lives. The U.S. remains one of the notable holdouts of the 2001 UN treaty known in full as the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries and it is unlikely we will ever join. 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. Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Paul Slough and Devin Heard were convicted on charges of first-degree murder and manslaughter by a federal jury in October 2014. "[21] Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal. Since the harrowing Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007, the Blackwater private military contractor, renamed as Academi in 2011 and becoming a subsidiary of Constellis Group following a merger with Triple Canopy in 2014, has built quite a business empire for itself. [3] Erik Prince provided weapons and aircraft to eastern Libyas warlord Khalifa Haftar: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/world/middleeast/libya-mercenaries-arms-embargo.html. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? The news shows the helicopter falling to the ground as it burns. The convictions made the victims feel that justice had been obtained. "These four individuals were given sentences ranging from 12 years to life imprisonment, including on charges of first-degree murder," spokesperson Marta Hurtado said in a statement. Mohammed had not been shot. Machine gunfire tore through his body. If it is determined that one person was complicit in the wrongdoing, we would support accountability in that. And none of the I.P. Nassar Hamza was 67 years old when he was shot and wounded in the arm. [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. Four guards fired on unarmed crowd in Baghdad in 2007, killing 14 and sparking outrage over use of private security in war zones. 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. When Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten was tried and convicted for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, the U.S. legal system determined that he needed a new trial. The result of the long legal battle is that each man was ensured a fair trial, free of partiality and without unjust favor. . 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. Their route home was through Nisour Square. Trumps pardon of the Blackwater mercenaries who murdered 14 Iraqi civilians at Nisour Square shows the world what justice means in the United States. 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 their view, this confirmed that they were under attack by a vehicle bomb, whereupon they fired at the car, killing both people in it as well as the Iraqi policeman. But when the shooting started, his life and the lives of his entire family changed forever. "With those sentences reversed by the stroke of a pen, who will trust the American justice system again?". Dickinson says the great expense that the FBI put into the prosecution of the case has now come to nothing. Since the harrowing Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007, the Blackwater private military contractor, renamed as Academi in 2011 and becoming a subsidiary of Constellis Group following a merger with Triple Canopy in 2014, has built quite a business empire for itself. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. The Nisour Square Massacre, in which Blackwater mercenaries fired hundreds of rounds in a crowded Baghdad traffic square, killing fourteen Iraqis, including ten women and two children, and . [29] Several sources have stated that the explosion was caused by a mortar round, though this is not reflected in the State Department's incident report. Blackwater is an American private military company . [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. [40], On October 11, 2007, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed suit against Blackwater USA under the Alien Tort Claims Act on behalf of an injured Iraqi and the families of three of the seventeen Iraqis who were killed by Blackwater employees during the September 16, 2007, shooting incident. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. When #Blackwater mercenaries were murdering civilians in the #IraqWar, did these voices demand seizure of yachts owned by CEO Erik Prince? The Machiavellian plan of NATOs military strategists is to establish refugee settlements with the humanitarian assistance in the border regions of Ukraines neighboring countries Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, and then provide guerrilla warfare training and lethal arms to all able-bodied men of military age in order to bleed Russias security forces in the protracted irregular warfare. It was funded with millions that. Nasser, who attended the 2014 trial in the United States, said his brother's death had broken his father's heart. However, after "Raven 23" entered Nisour Square, Watson was ordered to "lock down the traffic circle to expedite the travel of [the other Blackwater team]". He suffered from his wounds for over a year until he died from a brain injury. [78] The opinion elaborated "the government failed to establish that the Iraqi witnesses it presented to the second grand jury were not in any way influenced by their previous exposure to the defendants' compelled statements. I felt I had done that, and I knew the prosecutors were doing that. It was chaotic. When Mohammed saw the convoy enter the traffic circle, he initially thought they were regular U.S. Army members. But supporters of the military contractors, who argued the investigation was tainted and the punishments too severe, cheered the news. 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." Mohammed knew his sons injuries were fatal, but he had to try. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. The Blackwater guards appeared to have fired grenade launchers in addition to machine guns, according to the report. Although NATO powers did provide Stingers to their jihadist proxies that helped turn the tide in the Soviet-Afghan war in the eighties, since then, despite providing anti-tank munitions and rest of weapons to militant groups during the proxy wars in Libya and Syria, Western powers have consistently avoided providing MANPADS to proxy forces, because such deadly anti-aircraft munitions could become a long-term threat not only to military aircraft but also to civilian airlines. Ali was slumped over against the glass. Donald Trump has pardoned the four contractors jailed over the killing of 14 civilians. The four armed contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerry Zovko, Wesley Batalona, and Mike Teague, were killed and dragged from their vehicles. FBI scientists couldn't match bullets from the square to guns carried by the Blackwater guards and FBI investigators found foreign cartridge cases of a kind not used by U.S. or Blackwater personnel. [79] Three weeks later, Vice President Joe Biden, who was overseeing U.S. policy in Iraq, promised Iraqi leaders the U.S. would appeal the dismissal of these charges. The Nisour Square massacreoccurred on September 16, 2007, when employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (now Constellis), a private military companycontracted by the US government to provide security services in Iraq, shot at Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad, while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy. There are numerous reported incidents of mass murder conducted by US soldiers, special forces. Sarah Holewinski, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said Trump's pardons were an insult to justice, "but it's also an insult to the victims. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each.