"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. The U.S. legal system, a pillar of fairness in the world, had worked. Mohammed was thrilled when the U.S. entered Baghdad years earlier in 2003. [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. Six of my Blackwater brethren contractors are on the helicopter going to Tikrit. 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. "I'm really shocked. Luckily, before his SUV was attacked, Mohammed, his sister, and their children had time to duck into the car. [87], On April 13, 2015, federal district judge Royce C. Lamberth sentenced Slatten to life in prison, while the other three guards were sentenced to 30 years in prison each. The order confines most Americans to a 3.5 square miles (9.1km2) area in the center of the city so that they are unable to visit other areas without traveling in a helicopter. [54] He served one tour in Iraq before being hired as a Personal Security Specialist in Iraq. "[46] Hasan Jaber Salman, a lawyer who was one of the wounded, said that "no one did anything to provoke Blackwater" and that "as we turned back they opened fire at all cars from behind"[61] An Iraqi police officer who was directing traffic at the scene said Blackwater guards "became the terrorists" when they opened fire on civilians unprovoked, while a businessman said he wasn't seeking compensation but only "the truth" from the guards. AP Prosecutors said the Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers. Depicting a doomsday scenario in order to malign Russias calculated offensive in Ukraine to minimize collateral damage, mainstream reporting focused today on thefire that broke out [1] at Zaporizhzhia plant, one of Europes largest nuclear power plants situated 550 km southeast of Kyiv. 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. Three former employees of the US private military contractor once known as Blackwater were sentenced to 30 years in prison on Monday and a fourth received a life sentence . On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Free shipping for many products! [54], Radio logs released in December 2008 seemed to affirm that the guards had been responding to an attack on September 16. Former Blackwater mercenary convicted of Baghdad civilian massacre 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. Trump Pardons Blackwater Contractors Who Killed Iraqis The pardons are one of several the US president has granted to American service personnel and contractors accused or convicted of crimes against non-combatants and civilians in war zones. Everything was eerily quiet. [55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. What Is Blackwater? [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. The September 16, 2007 shootings by Blackwater mercenaries left 14 Iraqis dead and wounded 18 others in Baghdad's Nisour Square. Slough, Liberty and Heard were convicted on multiple charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter in 2014, while Slatten, who was the first to start shooting, was convicted of first-degree murder. Their cover: "return of Ukrainians from the French Foreign Legion.". It was not an easy path in either the civil or criminal legal system. (Iraqi police) or any of the local security forces fired back at them", the official continued. [73], The trial was set for early 2010,[74] but the charges were dismissed by United States District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Ricardo Urbina on December 31, 2009, who ruled that the Justice Department had mishandled evidence and violated the guards' constitutional rights. A caption at the bottom of the screen states . The result of the long legal battle is that each man was ensured a fair trial, free of partiality and without unjust favor. The Dark Truth about Blackwater - Brookings Nassar Hamza was 67 years old when he was shot and wounded in the arm. [54] He enlisted in 1999, and served in Bosnia with the 3rd Infantry Division. It was his business partner who lay in the pool of blood and was repeatedly shot. On January 31, 2009, the U.S. State Department notified Blackwater that it would not be renewing its security contract with the company. The Untold Truth Of The Blackwater Massacre - Grunge Mohammed quickly got out of the car and saw blood inside the rear window. An initial prosecution was thrown out by a federal judge sparking outrage in Iraq but the then vice-president, Joe Biden, promised to pursue a fresh prosecution, which succeeded in 2015. Nasser, who attended the 2014 trial in the United States, said his brother's death had broken his father's heart. Prince strongly criticized the way in which federal authorities had handled the investigation and disputed the claims that U.S. or Blackwater personnel were to blame for the shootings. Opinion | Trump's Most Disgusting Pardons - The New York Times 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. Ali was slumped over against the glass. 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. More than 3,000 troops remain in Iraq, according to defense officials, with a drawdown scheduled for January. "Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians", 23 December 2020. Five independent UN experts condemned United States President Donald Trump's pardoning of private security contractors, convicted in 2015 for war crimes in Iraq, on Wednesday. And it will be a success, Im sure. But unsurprisingly, he did not describe who those thousands of daredevil volunteers willing to sacrifice lives and limbs in a foreign war were. They would turn Blackwater into roadkill. 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. October 22 2014, 9:58 a.m. A federal jury in Washington, D.C., returned guilty verdicts against four . Machine gunfire tore through his body. It was as if someone had targeted the area in his SUV where a persons head would have been. Its worth recalling that before the Biden-Putin summit at Geneva last June, Russia had a similar troop build-up along Ukraines borders. Blackwater mercenaries on trial in US court for 2007 Iraq massacre He was shot through the back with a massive exit wound in his chest. Four guards fired on unarmed crowd in Baghdad in 2007, killing 14 and sparking outrage over use of private security in war zones. She turned the location into an exotic bookstore and caf, offering erotica readings, among other licentious pastimes. After selling Blackwater to a group of investors in 2010, Erik Prince, a former US Navy Seals officer and the swashbuckling founder of Blackwater, has founded another security company Frontier Services Group, registered at Hong Kong Stock Exchange, that advises and provides aviation and logistical solutions to Chinese oligarchs for the security of their lucrative business projects in Africa. 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. [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. 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. [66] Howard Krongard, who was appointed Inspector General of the U.S. State Department in 2005,[67] resigned in December 2007 after he was accused by the House Oversight Committee of improperly interfering with investigations into the Blackwater Baghdad shootings. Trump's pardon of mercenaries guilty of massacre in Iraq leads to Again, the result was the civil legal system exhausting every defense afforded to Blackwater and the men. Mohammed kept seeing the man on the ground next to him being fired upon as he lay dead. Those Warnings Were Ignored, How Russia Will Counterpunch U.S./EU Declaration of War, Khazarian Mafia at War: The Jewish Oligarch Who Planned the Terror Attack on Bryansk, Covert Operations In Vietnam: The Incomplete History of US-Norway Collaboration. The other three guards faced decades in prison; the weapons charges carried a minimum 30-year sentence under a law enacted during the 1990s cocaine epidemic. 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. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. They claimed they were fired on, but. The incident happened at the height of the "military surge" ordered by the then President George W. Bush to bring the armed resistance against the occupation in Iraq under control. US pardons Blackwater guards: An 'affront to justice' - UN experts It was chaotic. 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. 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. 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 . Trump's pardon of Blackwater contractors convicted of massacre greeted [49], An Interior Ministry spokesman said Iraqi authorities had completed their investigation into the shooting and concluded that Blackwater guards were responsible for the deaths. Blackwater and its employees had been given immunity from any criminal or civil exposure in Iraq that was part of Princes contract with the State Department. [26][29], An Iraqi government account of the incident stated that as the convoy drew close to Nisour Square, a Kia sedan with a woman and her adult son in it was approaching the square from a distance, driving slowly on the wrong side of the road, and that the driver ignored a police officer's whistle to clear a path for the convoy. Supporters of the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide had lobbied for the pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished. The Blackwater mercenaries were among the most flagrant killers in Iraq but hardly unique. In addition to the Kinani family, I represented five other families and victims. [26][27] A U.S. Army convoy arrived at 12:39p.m., backed by air cover, to escort TST 22 back to the Green Zone. The My Lai massacre took place on 16 March 1968. [21]:116[22] The Blackwater commander, Jimmy Watson, had received an order to stand by and not leave the Green Zone upon reaching a checkpoint, but he made a "tactical decision" to advance to Nisour Square after waiting for a few minutes; upon informing the Blackwater Tactical Operations Center of this, he was ordered to return to the Green Zone. The U.N. Human Rights Office says it's "deeply concerned" by the pardons. Scores of Iraqis injured in anti-government protests in Baghdad, Who will protect us?: Baghdad residents wait out fighting as city grinds to halt, Iraqi cleric tells loyalists to return to their homes after fighting in Baghdad, Deadly violence in Baghdad after leading cleric Moqtada al-Sadr says he is quitting politics, Shia factions mass in Baghdad raising fears of more unrest, Protesters storm Iraq parliament again amid unrest over Iran-backed groups, Iran may eventually get its way in protracted power struggle in Iraq, Hundreds of protesters storm Iraq parliament in support of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Briton jailed in Iraq for smuggling antiquities to be freed, says lawyer. The hospital was too busy. The convictions made the victims feel that justice had been obtained. Thats all it takes to support the journalism you rely on. Russian-American political scientist Malek Dudakov called the shooting a landmark event and a major international scandal. He was left with shrapnel in his body from the rocket launched grenade that was fired into his vehicle as he escaped. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most publicized US crimes of the 8-year Iraq war. And none of the I.P. U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the incident. I Sued Blackwater for the Massacre of Iraqi Civilians. Trump Just He was in the car next to Mohammed. 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]". Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted six years ago in the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of 17 others. WaPo says, 'Investigators for the military and the FBI later described . Hassan Salman is among the Iraqis who were shot during the ambush. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. About the author:Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geostrategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Af-Pak and the Middle East regions. But NATOs covert operators embedded with Ukraines security forces reassured them that the war wasnt over and implored them to give their Western mentors a face-saving by mounting at least a semblance of resistance against the fierce onslaught by Russias professional security forces. 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. He received poor treatment because his injuries were less life threatening, but he was left with a disfigured and useless arm. [I]f such a thing happened in America or Britain, would the American president or American citizens accept it? His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex, and petro-imperialism. First ones from 16,000. Victims were everywhere. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Their belief in our legal system was misplaced. Nicholas Slatten, 35, was a former security guard at the private US military firm Blackwater and was based in Baghdad. 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. When Slattens conviction was overturned, I was concerned that the case would be ignored. Dec. 24, 2020 Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani with a photo of his 9-year-old son, Ali, who was killed by Blackwater. 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. Their route home was through Nisour Square. [29] The banning was described by P. W. Singer, an expert on the private military industry, as "inevitable", given the US government's reliance on and lack of oversight of the private military industry in Iraq. [92] However, the court then found that the mandatory minimum sentences as applied to the defendants were unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishments, over the partial dissent of Judge Judith W. Blackwater mercenaries in helicopters also fired into traffic from overhead. [16] The FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause.

Porter Cable Air Compressor Maintenancebensalem High School Yearbook, Tampa Yacht Club Initiation Fee, Articles B