[37] A senior aide to al-Maliki said that three of the Blackwater guards were Iraqis and could be subject to prosecution. That notion has now been shown to be false, Dickinson says. [40] The US House passed a bill, titled the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, that would make all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones subject to prosecution by U.S. Prosecutors argued the men did not face hostile gunfire when they began shooting, and continued to shoot despite the lack of threats. [4] Germany to ship anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-ship-anti-aircraft-missiles-to-ukraine-reports/a-60995325. Prosecutors said the Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers. The U.S. legal system, a pillar of fairness in the world, had worked. Mohammed knew his sons injuries were fatal, but he had to try. 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. They are coming to defend freedom, defend life. I had never imagined that Trump or any other politician would affect American justice.". The incident was allegedly resolved only after another Blackwater contractor pointed his weapon at the man still firing and ordered him to stop. The only way these men could be brought to justice was in the United States. He received poor treatment because his injuries were less life threatening, but he was left with a disfigured and useless arm. 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. Before. The four armored vehicles drove away. Also quoted in the memorandum was David Boslego, a retired US army colonel, who said the massacre was a grossly excessive use of force and grossly inappropriate for an entity whose only job was to provide personal protection to somebody in an armoured vehicle. The pardons have reduced American talk of human rights to mere "slogans," he said, adding, "They prefer animals over humans, and then they talk about human rights, justice and humanity. The killing of innocent civilians, including two young boys, sparked international outrage and public scrutiny into the use of private military companies . His sister was safe. 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. 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. And none of the I.P. The result is not just that we see an injustice in the United States, but that the world must surely see cracks in the pillars of justice upon which our system is based. 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. [12] The U.S. State Department has said that "innocent life was lost",[13] and according to The Washington Post, a military report appeared to corroborate "the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault". "I think what that does is it sends the wrong message to the people of Iraq, who we told we were going to come in and protect, and to the rest of the world, that the pillars of justice upon which the United States is based on has a crack in it," he says. An Iraqi looks at a burned car in Nisour Square in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Yarmukh, on Sept. 24, 2007, eight days after Blackwater guards who were escorting U.S. Embassy officials opened fire there. "Today we were surprised that the American president issued a decision to pardon these criminals, murderers and thugs," Salman said, speaking from Baghdad. [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. The risk is now that the U.S., who has a presence worldwide, has exposure for how they might be treated or what people of other countries might think could happen or would happen if war crimes are committed by U.S. citizens abroad. 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. "On what basis did Trump depend on to release them? 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." [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. [88], On August 4, 2017, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned Slatten's murder conviction and ordered the other defendants to be re-sentenced to time already served. The news shows the helicopter falling to the ground as it burns. [77] "Prosecutors should therefore have built their case against the men without them", a BBC report explained. 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. [55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. But Trump reached a peace agreement with the Taliban and then lost the re-election bid before he could consider the bizarre proposal. At the sentencing, the US attorneys office said in a statement: The sheer amount of unnecessary human loss and suffering attributable to the defendants criminal conduct on 16 September 2007 is staggering., After news of the pardon emerged on Tuesday night, Brian Heberlig, a lawyer for one of the four pardoned Blackwater defendants, said: Paul Slough and his colleagues didnt deserve to spend one minute in prison. 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. No wonder Russia formally issued an ultimatum on Tuesday, March 1, that it would target the hub of covert warfare. (L-r) Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten. By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. security contractors who had previously been sentenced over the death of 17 Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisur Square massacre . He thought they had been given a miracle after he saw so many others killed. Instead of returning the favor, however, the conceited leader of supposedly the worlds sole surviving superpower turned down the hand of friendship and even snubbed Putin. He was ensured a fair trial and convicted for his crimes. [15] The incident sparked at least five investigations, including one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 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. 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. Each step of the way, the U.S. legal system ensured that these men were given fair and just prosecutions. 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. There are numerous reported incidents of mass murder conducted by US soldiers, special forces. 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. In the middle of the attack, Mohammed could not understand why this man lying dead was a target. Suddenly, bullets began to riddle Mohammeds car. Blackwater has been renamed and falls under the Constellis group of companies, a risk management business formed in 2010. Of the $10 billion humanitarian and military assistance for Ukraine announced by the Biden administration, the top brass of the Pentagon is reportedly making preparations for allocating a significant portion of the funds for providing military training and arms to almost a million refugees who have fled Ukraine following the war. That may be the overriding damage caused by these pardons. [42] A spokesman stated that the ban would last for the duration of the investigation, and that it would not be permanent. The ones who were killed on the street were shot running for their lives. "We've backed off that. Mohammed and his sister screamed for their children to get down. Its worth recalling that before the Biden-Putin summit at Geneva last June, Russia had a similar troop build-up along Ukraines borders. "Paul Slough and his colleagues didn't deserve to spend one minute in prison," Brian Heberlig, a lawyer for Slough, told The Associated Press. 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. [54] He enlisted in 1999, and served in Bosnia with the 3rd Infantry Division. [48] According to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised a "fair and transparent" investigation into the incident. ", Human Rights Watch says the pardons "show contempt for the rule of law.". I commented when the convictions were first brought that I was certain my clients who were still residents of Iraq were pleased to know that justice had been served. 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. 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. While the #RussianOligarchs are vile post-Soviet capitalists, the hypocrisy of the US media is revealing. Thats what lawyers do in the United States: We fight for those who cant fight for themselves. It was chaotic. He lay in the hallway for an hour before he died. 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! [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. "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. This is not for the faint of heart but allegedly a video from the Ukraine conflict at a check-point at Mariupol which is surrounded by Russian troops. The Nisour Square massacre occurred on September 16, 2007, when employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (now Constellis), a private military company contracted 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. 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. Paul Dickinson[emailprotected]farrin.com. A 20,000-strong mercenary army is being assembled in Poland. The fire has since been extinguished after the plant was captured by Russian troops and no radiation leakage has been detected. Trumps pardon of the Blackwater mercenaries who murdered 14 Iraqi civilians at Nisour Square shows the world what justice means in the United States. Liberty is one of four former Blackwater mercenaries pardoned by President Donald Trump in one of . The bullets rained through the roofs of cars, taxis and buses, he says. 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. The State Department announced an American-Iraqi joint commission to investigate both the shooting and the broader issue of employing private security contractors. Again, I knew my clients would be pleased to know that justice had been served and their rights had been protected. [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. He was driving on flat tires and with a shattered windshield. 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. [54] He received an honorable discharge in 2002 and then enlisted in the Texas National Guard. Again be warned it is ugly. [37][38] The incident caused Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to call on the U.S. government to end its contract with Blackwater USA,[39] and for the Iraqi government to push for an apology, compensation for victims or their families and for the guards involved in the shooting to be held "accountable". Iraqi authorities say 17 people were killed; the Department of Justice has said the total was 14. [41], Richard J. Griffin, the Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, who made key decisions regarding the department's oversight of private security contractor Blackwater USA, resigned in November 2007, after a critical review by the House Oversight Committee found that his office had failed to adequately supervise private contractors during the Blackwater Baghdad shootings. 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. [45] Also, it is not clear whether the license revocation is permanent. 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. Russias reluctant and delayed military intervention in Ukraine is fundamentally a war of power projection, a shot across the bow to perfidious former allies, the East European states, whove been joining the EU and NATO in droves since the break-up of Soviet Union in 1991, that the collective security of Eurasian nations is a shared responsibility, and NATOs eastward expansion along Russias western flank not only imperils the security of resurgent Russia but also compromises the balance of power in the multipolar world. 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. Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) March 1, 2022. 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. "I don't know what I did to Blackwater," Kinani told ABC News. They claimed they were fired on, but prosecutors said the Blackwater guards opened fire first. [83], In September 2013, the charges against Ball were dropped. 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 massacre that sparked an international outcry over the use of mercenaries in war. That day destroyed me completely, Kinani said. Dec. 24, 2020 Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani with a photo of his 9-year-old son, Ali, who was killed by Blackwater. Although the Pentagons military contractors have been known to be training and advising several brigades of neo-Nazis backed by Ukraines security forces in the Donbas region since 2014, Erik Prince along with his associates from several other private security firms providing military contractors to the US Department of Defense personally visited Kyiv early last month following the Russian troop build-up and met with security officials of the Zelensky regime, according to informed sources. Covert Operations In Vietnam: The Incomplete History of US-Norway Collaboration. We are taking fire from insurgents and Iraqi police. It remains unclear whether the team member mistook the civilians for insurgents. [19] A Blackwater spokeswoman responded to the findings by saying Blackwater "supports the stringent accountability of the industry. [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. He was told that he had to go to a neurologic hospital on the other side of Baghdad. Mohammed forced a doctor to look at Ali. U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the incident. [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. Before embarking on the clandestine Kyiv visit, Erik Prince consulted with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Director National Intelligence Avril Haines, with whom his relationship goes a long way the back to the early nineties after she purchased a bar in Fells Point, Baltimore, which had been seized in a drug raid. When #Blackwater mercenaries were murdering civilians in the #IraqWar, did these voices demand seizure of yachts owned by CEO Erik Prince? [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. Now justice has been undone by the stroke of a pen," Sarah Holewinski, the organization's Washington director, said in a statement. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq increasingly relied on private contractors, Blackwater being only the most infamous. The four armed contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerry Zovko, Wesley Batalona, and Mike Teague, were killed and dragged from their vehicles. In 2013, Academi subsidiary International Development Solutions received an approximately $92million contract for State Department security guards. [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. The Beginning Blackwater USA began in 1997 by Al Clark and Erik Prince. Their belief in our legal system was misplaced. [I]f such a thing happened in America or Britain, would the American president or American citizens accept it? Spring flowers are planted in Nisour Square, the site of a deadly shootout by Blackwater private security contractors in 2007, in Baghdad on April 15, 2015. The Blackwater mercenaries were among the most flagrant killers in Iraq but hardly unique. [62] After a group of Iraqi ministers backed the Iraqi Interior Ministry's decision to shut down Blackwater USA's operations in Iraq,[29] Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on the U.S. government to end its contract with Blackwater[39] and called on Blackwater to pay the families $8million in compensation. Luckily, before his SUV was attacked, Mohammed, his sister, and their children had time to duck into the car. A caption at the bottom of the screen states . His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex, and petro-imperialism. [41], On September 18, 2007, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said Blackwater is "not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq". Are they going to release me?". [41] Senate Democratic leaders said they planned to pass similar legislation as soon as possible. The four were convicted at then VP Joe Biden's insistence, and were serving jail terms. Ali was the youngest of Blackwaters victims that day. [97], On December 22, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump granted full presidential pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard. "This was the slaughter of innocent civilians who were merely going about their day when a Blackwater convoy rolled through a traffic circle after having violated orders to stand down and not exit the Green Zone and began firing indiscriminately into cars that were carrying people going to work.". [19] According to this account, the security team fired warning shots and then lethal fire at the Kia. [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/. But when the shooting started, his life and the lives of his entire family changed forever. ", Trump Grants Slew Of Pardons, Including To George Papadopoulos And Duncan Hunter, Blackwater Guards Found Guilty In 2007 Shootings In Iraq, Lawyer For Victims' Families On Trump Pardoning 4 Former Blackwater Contractors. An ambulance was called, and Ali and Mohammad were rushed to the other side of town. 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. 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. The four guards Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten were part of an armoured convoy that opened fire indiscriminately with machine-guns, grenade launchers and a sniper on a crowd of unarmed people in a square in the Iraqi capital. "Victims of gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law also have the right to a remedy. 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. 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. 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 . Mohammed was thrilled when the U.S. entered Baghdad years earlier in 2003. He told NPR on Wednesday that he was shocked by Trump's pardons he himself had made trips to the U.S. to give testimony in the proceedings against the four. How is Eric Prince still breathing? Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. "Pardoning them contributes to impunity and has the effect of emboldening others to commit such crimes in the future. Further, besides advising and assisting the UAEs petro-monarchy in strengthening the police state, Erik Prince alsoreportedly provided[3] weapons and modified aircraft to eastern Libyas warlord and former CIA asset Khalifa Haftar, backed by Egypt and UAE, in his thwarted military campaign against the Tripoli government lasting from April 2019 to June 2020. In addition to the Kinani family, I represented five other families and victims. ", "By investigating these crimes and completing legal proceedings, the US complied with its obligations under international law," she added. Contractor Banned by Iraq Over Shootings", "F.B.I. They claimed they were fired on, but. What Is Blackwater? He was shot while seated in a public bus. Dickinson says that the victims' families are likely to feel let down and abandoned by the U.S. government. "[21] Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal. Mohammed kept seeing the man on the ground next to him being fired upon as he lay dead. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most publicized US crimes of the 8-year Iraq war. [64], US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified before Congress that the Pentagon has sufficient legal authority to control its contractors, but that commanders lack sufficient "means and resources" to exercise adequate oversight. 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. First ones from 16,000. They beat citizens and scorn them. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBIs most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. As Mohammed held his sons hand, he convulsed and died in the back of the ambulance. 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.

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