3", is named Paul Slough. As Raven 23 was departing Nisour Square, several members continued to discharge their weapons, causing additional civilian deaths and injuries. [36] Several Iraqi and American investigations have been conducted into the incident. They are coming to defend freedom, defend life. [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. 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. ", "After years of waiting, the victims finally saw justice served when these men were convicted," she said in an email. "[21] Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal. [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. 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. Blackwater was founded by Erik Prince, whose sister, Betsy DeVos, was appointed Trumps education secretary. Trump's pardon of Blackwater 'Four' highlights deep divisions over Iraq Why Is Assange in Jail and Not Seymour Hersh? [101][102] The Iraqi Foreign Ministry urged the United States to reconsider, declaring the pardons "did not take into account the seriousness of the crime committed".[103]. Trump pardons ex-campaign aide and disgraced Republican lawmakers, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Trump's Blackwater Guard Pardons Cause Shock And Dismay : NPR [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. The massacre resulted in the deaths of 17 unarmed Iraqis and wounded at least 20 others. The report found that the guards fired their weapons 195 times from the beginning of 2005 through the second week of September 2005. The aide also said that the Iraqi government was pushing for an apology, compensation for victims or their families and for the guards involved in the shooting to be held "accountable". In this 2007 video, witnesses shed light on the killing of 17 Iraqis by American contractors in Baghdad.Read the article here: http://nyti.ms/1u1cNzySubscrib. Dickinson says that the victims' families are likely to feel let down and abandoned by the U.S. government. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they responded. 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. 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. [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". He was left with shrapnel in his body from the rocket launched grenade that was fired into his vehicle as he escaped. Luckily, before his SUV was attacked, Mohammed, his sister, and their children had time to duck into the car. Ali was slumped over against the glass. The Beginning Blackwater USA began in 1997 by Al Clark and Erik Prince. [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. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? He despised Saddam Hussein and his oppressive and vindictive ways. He was in the car next to Mohammed. The US government said in a memorandum filed after the sentencing: None of the victims was an insurgent, or posed any threat to the Raven 23 convoy. The memorandum also contained quotations from relatives of the dead, including Mohammad Kinani, whose nine-year-old son Ali was killed. 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. Donald Trump has pardoned the four contractors jailed over the killing of 14 civilians. Blackwater Mercenaries: NATO's Secret Weapon in Ukraine War 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. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq increasingly relied on private contractors, Blackwater being only the most infamous. The bullets rained through the roofs of cars, taxis and buses, he says. Blackwater Founder Remains Free and Rich While His Former Employees Go Trump's pardon of Blackwater contractors convicted of massacre greeted When Mohammed opened the door, his son fell toward him as his skull opened and a large part of Alis brain fell onto the pavement between his fathers feet. [48] According to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised a "fair and transparent" investigation into the incident. Suddenly, bullets began to riddle Mohammeds car. Prosecutors asserted the heavily armed Raven 23 Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine-guns and grenade launchers. The man that just spoken to him was dead. The Blackwater mercenaries were among the most flagrant killers in Iraq but hardly unique. The My Lai massacre took place on 16 March 1968. Ukraine War Anniversary: UN and China Work for Peace, Devilish Zelensky, Kiev Hid Its Dead Soldiers in the Ravines. 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. [23]:32 Shortly after assuming their positions, "Raven 23" began firing on civilians in response to an approaching car, killing fourteen and wounding twenty more. Being so close to the Green Zone, he thought someone important might be entering or leaving the area. The Untold Truth Of The Blackwater Massacre - Grunge The fire has since been extinguished after the plant was captured by Russian troops and no radiation leakage has been detected. The four armored vehicles drove away. Iraqi traffic police initially tried to wave down the Blackwater men that there was no threat, but they too had to run for cover. 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. on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadnt done it? When he arrived at the hospital, it was a war zone. The massacre took place in 2007, when the four were working as guards for Blackwater, a private military contractor, on an assignment in Baghdad. 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. For us, for everyone. 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. They beat citizens and scorn them. But supporters of the military contractors, who argued the investigation was tainted and the punishments too severe, cheered the news. Only. It remains unclear whether the team member mistook the civilians for insurgents. Are they going to release me?". [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. As many as 504 children, women and older men were killed by a US infantry company, members of which also raped numerous women and girls. [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. Nasser's younger brother, Mahdi Saheb Nasser, was 22 and working as a taxi driver when he was killed in September 2007 alongside other unarmed civilians in Baghdad's Nisur Square. Now justice has been undone by the stroke of a pen," Sarah Holewinski, the organization's Washington director, said in a statement. 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. )[60], Baghdad resident Halim Mashkoor told AP Television News, "We see the security firms doing whatever they want in the streets. But its the much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare for which Russia has no antidote, as the global neocolonial order is being led by the United States and its Western European clients since the signing of the Bretton Woods Accord in 1945 following the Second World War. The traffic circle, Nisour Square, was only a block away from one of the main entrance gates to Baghdads Green Zone. [55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. Trumps pardon of the Blackwater mercenaries who murdered 14 Iraqi civilians at Nisour Square shows the world what justice means in the United States. [16] The FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause. 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. Iraqi authorities say 17 people were killed; the Department of Justice has said the total was 14. Extending the hand of friendship, Russia significantly drawdown its forces along the western border before the summit last year. 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. To understand the carnage that happened on the streets that day, you need to hear it in Mohammeds words as he explained it to me. Mohammed and his sister screamed for their children to get down. Supporters of the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide had lobbied for the pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished. . "This was Baghdad's Bloody Sunday," Dickinson told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on Wednesday. I represented the Kinani family and five other victims of the Blackwater guards who were convicted of killing at least 14 innocent Iraqi citizens that day and injured dozens more. It wasnt unusual for regular U.S. Army convoys to stop traffic. [19] A Blackwater spokeswoman responded to the findings by saying Blackwater "supports the stringent accountability of the industry. Liberty is one of four former Blackwater mercenaries pardoned by President Donald Trump in one of . "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. "Today we were surprised that the American president issued a decision to pardon these criminals, murderers and thugs," Salman said, speaking from Baghdad. "Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians", 23 December 2020. [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.
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