[81] A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found "systemic" errors in the district court's 2009 decision to dismiss charges against the five former Blackwater guards and added "We find that the district court's findings depend on an erroneous view of the law". [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. [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]. 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 . 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. . [28] TST 22 arrived at Nisour Square after Raven 23 had left; when TST 22 tried to withdraw, its route was blocked by Iraqi Army and Police vehicles. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they responded. [54] He enlisted in 1999, and served in Bosnia with the 3rd Infantry Division. [2] Reactions [ edit] The shooting ended as suddenly as it started. Justice Blackwater mercenary sentenced to life in prison On Wednesday, Slatten was sentenced to life in federal prison for initiating a massacre that left 14 Iraqi civilians dead. Before. Majid Al Kareem was 51 years old when he was shot. Ghasson Mahmood was a 55-year-old civil engineer. 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. Mohammed turned his bullet-riddled SUV around and drove back to the closest hospital only a few blocks behind him. Why did it happen? 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. As Mohammed held his sons hand, he convulsed and died in the back of the ambulance. [54] He received an honorable discharge in 2002 and then enlisted in the Texas National Guard. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBIs most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. Before VT Nuclear Education: The Beirut Nuclear Coverup, The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia. An ambulance was called, and Ali and Mohammad were rushed to the other side of town. If it is determined that one person was complicit in the wrongdoing, we would support accountability in that. [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. 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. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. Using the good offices of his sister Betsy Devos, who worked as Trumps secretary of education, Erik Prince even made an offer to Trump for the outsourcing of the Afghanistan war to private military contractors advising and assisting Afghan security forces following the withdrawal of US troops. It was funded with millions that. Blackwater mercenaries in helicopters also fired into traffic from overhead. Luckily, before his SUV was attacked, Mohammed, his sister, and their children had time to duck into the car. [97], On December 22, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump granted full presidential pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard. 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. [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. A caption at the bottom of the screen states . Defence lawyers argued their clients returned fire after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. Ali was slumped over against the glass. The Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul stated that the killings were unprovoked. [19] The three justifiable killings were those of the two passengers in the white Kia sedan and an unidentified Iraqi nearby. 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. 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. He was shot in the abdomen. Rather than mitigating the suffering of Ukraines disenfranchised masses held hostage by the Zelensky regime, the self-styled champions of human rights are doing all they can to lure Russia into their bear trap project, a term borrowed from the Soviet-Afghan War of the eighties when Western regimes used Pakistans security forces and generous funding from the oil-rich Gulf States for providing guerrilla warfare training and lethal weaponry to Afghan jihadists to bleed the security forces of former the Soviet Union in the protracted war. I know that each of them placed great faith in the U.S. legal system. 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. "We've backed off that. Mohammed met members of the U.S. Army on the streets and handed out candy and juice when he saw them. He was driving on flat tires and with a shattered windshield. For us, for everyone. When Slattens conviction was overturned, I was concerned that the case would be ignored. 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? 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. After the convictions, Blackwater which changed its name to Xe and then Academi after being sold said it was relieved that the justice system has completed its investigation into a tragedy that occurred at Nisour Square in 2007 and that any wrongdoing that was carried out has been addressed by our courts. (Iraqi police) or any of the local security forces fired back at them", the official continued. 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. https://t.co/O88HKyb3wd, Kevin Reed | wsws.org (@KevinReedWSWS) March 4, 2022. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most prominent events of the US-Iraq conflict, raising doubts about America's true intentions in the region. It remains unclear whether the team member mistook the civilians for insurgents. "This incident motivated the Iraqi authorities to seek the withdrawal of American troops from the country. 3", is named Paul Slough. 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. Nassar Hamza was 67 years old when he was shot and wounded in the arm. That changed yesterday with President Donald Trumps pardons. "Victims of gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law also have the right to a remedy. [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. hide caption. and thus prosecution by U.S. 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. Being so close to the Green Zone, he thought someone important might be entering or leaving the area. WaPo says, 'Investigators for the military and the FBI later described . 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. [37], Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which held hearings on the use of Private Security Contractors in February 2007, said his committee would hold hearings "to understand what has happened and the extent of the damage to U.S. security interests". 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. Paul Dickinson is a lawyer who represented six Iraqi families in a civil lawsuit against Blackwater and its founder, Erik Prince (who is the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos). That may be the overriding damage caused by these pardons. Blackwater has been renamed and falls under the Constellis group of companies, a risk management business formed in 2010. "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. Then-Vice President Joe Biden held a press conference to tell the citizens of Iraq that they would not be abandoned. [6][86] Bringing the weapons charges was disputed within the Justice Department, which initially opposed including them in the indictment. Trump pardons ex-campaign aide and disgraced Republican lawmakers, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. When Mohammed saw the convoy enter the traffic circle, he initially thought they were regular U.S. Army members. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most publicized US crimes of the 8-year Iraq war. 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. 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. 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. The hallways were full. [68][69], On September 24, 2007, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior announced it would file criminal charges against the Blackwater staff involved in the shooting, although it is unclear how some of them will be brought to trial. 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. Mohammed was thrilled when the U.S. entered Baghdad years earlier in 2003. [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. The Iraqi government ordered Blackwater to leave Iraq as soon as a joint Iraqi-U.S. committee finished drafting new guidelines on private contractors under the Iraqi-U.S. security agreement. [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. 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. AP On January 31, 2009, the U.S. State Department notified Blackwater that it would not be renewing its security contract with the company. [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. Russian-American political scientist Malek Dudakov called the shooting a landmark event and a major international scandal. The massacre resulted in the deaths of 17 unarmed Iraqis and wounded at least 20 others. After it was added, defense attorneys contended a 30-year sentence would be too severe, since the law was intended to deter gang members from carrying automatic weapons. 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. But he knew he was surviving as he kept yelling for the children in the back of his SUV to stay down. 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. Only. The key people in this have not spoken with investigators. First ones from 16,000. 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. "These are four innocent guys, and it is completely justified," Bill Coffield, a lawyer for Evan Liberty, told the AP. "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. The four armed contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerry Zovko, Wesley Batalona, and Mike Teague, were killed and dragged from their vehicles. Almost everyone who was killed or injured was shot in cars, taxis, or buses. 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. Ukrainian POW Unveils, Russian forces eliminating Ukrainian saboteurs that violated border, Greetings from Oujda, Morocco, the City of Mosques, VT RADIO: Exposing East Palestine Train Derailment Disaster with VTs, VT RADIO: Foreign Policy Gone Mad with VTs Senior Editor, VT RADIO: UFOs, Aliens, & Chinese Balloons with VTs Jack, Many Predicted NATO Expansion Would Lead to War. Victims were everywhere. [48] According to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised a "fair and transparent" investigation into the incident. Majid survived because he was on the passenger side of the car and was protected from most of the barrage of bullets. "[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. [3][84] Prosecutors stated they reached their decision after an "assessment of the admissible evidence against him". [6][85][86] Jurors sided with prosecutors' contention that the shooting was a criminal act, not a battlefield encounter gone wrong. He was in the car next to Mohammed. There are numerous reported incidents of mass murder conducted by US soldiers, special forces. "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 . 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. 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 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." Again be warned it is ugly. Joining is simple and doesnt need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. [14] The Iraqi government vowed to punish Blackwater. [24] The driver of the Kia was shot once in the head by a Blackwater contractor and was killed. [95][96] Heard, Liberty, and Slough were resentenced on September 5, 2019 to terms approximately half the original 30-year periods. 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. Abraham Al Mafrage was a 70-year-old farmer and father of seven who was also shot in the head and died that day. Again, I knew my clients would be pleased to know that justice had been served and their rights had been protected. Ali was the youngest of Blackwaters victims that day. ", "By investigating these crimes and completing legal proceedings, the US complied with its obligations under international law," she added. Bulk comes from private military companies of the Blackwater/Academi kind. 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. He thought they had been given a miracle after he saw so many others killed. He was shot while seated in a public bus. 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. [1][2][3] The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States. The incident was allegedly resolved only after another Blackwater contractor pointed his weapon at the man still firing and ordered him to stop. 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. [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. [46] On September 21, CNN reported that Blackwater would resume normal operations the following day. Mohammed would look to see what was happening. Monday's sentencing was. He saw the man next to him run. That wasnt unusual. He received poor treatment because his injuries were less life threatening, but he was left with a disfigured and useless arm. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq increasingly relied on private contractors, Blackwater being only the most infamous. 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. [9], Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. 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. "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. 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. [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. He died in the hospital hallway surrounded by family as he was asking for water. Trump issued pardons for all four men on Tuesday. 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.
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