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. 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. "This incident motivated the Iraqi authorities to seek the withdrawal of American troops from the country. [33], Three Blackwater guards who witnessed the incident later said that they believed the shootings were unjustified. Blackwater was founded by ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince in 1997 as a shooting range and military training ground in Moyock, North Carolina. https://www.ournewearthnews.com/2022/03/04/massacre-in-ukraine-caught-on-camera-and-probably-still-unfolding-viewer-discretion-advised-please-pray/. [70] A second civil lawsuit filed jointly by the families of six victims against Blackwater was settled on January 6, 2012 for an undisclosed sum. That day destroyed me completely, Kinani said. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? 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. He despised Saddam Hussein and his oppressive and vindictive ways. 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. Monday's sentencing was. The September 16, 2007 shootings by Blackwater mercenaries left 14 Iraqis dead and wounded 18 others in Baghdad's Nisour Square. 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. 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. Among his clients were the parents of a 9-year-old boy who was killed as he sat in the back of his father's car. The fire has since been extinguished after the plant was captured by Russian troops and no radiation leakage has been detected. 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). "With those sentences reversed by the stroke of a pen, who will trust the American justice system again?". The State Department announced an American-Iraqi joint commission to investigate both the shooting and the broader issue of employing private security contractors. 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. Constellis did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The man that just spoken to him was dead. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each. [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". [9], Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. 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 . Mohammed could see other cars being shot. When he arrived at the hospital, it was a war zone. [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. [26][27], On September 27, 2007, The New York Times reported that during the chaotic incident at Nisour Square, one member of the Blackwater security team continued to fire on civilians despite urgent cease-fire calls from colleagues. [10][11] The next day, Blackwater Worldwide's license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked. AP [56], On April 1, 2011, the Associated Press reported on Erik Prince's seven-hour testimony about what allegedly transpired. The massacre took place in 2007, when the four were working as guards for Blackwater, a private military contractor, on an assignment in Baghdad. And afterward, Iraqi citizens wanted to ensure that those who had done this were held responsible. 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. [71], In December 2008, the United States Department of Justice announced it was filing criminal charges against five of the Blackwater employees, and ordered them to surrender to the FBI. Extending the hand of friendship, Russia significantly drawdown its forces along the western border before the summit last year. 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. Why did it happen? "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 . Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they responded. Defence lawyers argued their clients returned fire after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. Mohammed kept seeing the man on the ground next to him being fired upon as he lay dead. That day changed my life forever. He was ensured a fair trial and convicted for his crimes. Hassan Salman is among the Iraqis who were shot during the ambush. [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]. 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. "How are. [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 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. 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. Trump issued pardons for all four men on Tuesday. It was his business partner who lay in the pool of blood and was repeatedly shot. 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. Each step of the way, the U.S. legal system ensured that these men were given fair and just prosecutions. "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.". The expense was to show the people of Iraq that the U.S. government would hold people accountable for their crimes, no matter when or where they were committed. Shots were fired everywhere. [57], In October 2007, the United Nations released a two-year study that stated that private contractors, although hired as "security guards", were performing military duties. 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. 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. Although Mohammed was going to return quickly with his sister and Alis cousins for a visit, Mohammed told his son that he could go with him. 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. 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. Mohammed was thrilled when the U.S. entered Baghdad years earlier in 2003. He had tried to run but was lying in a pool of blood killed by machine gunfire from the armored cars. [37], Blackwater, which had been operating in Iraq without an Iraqi government license, applied for one after the incident, but the application was rejected by Iraqi officials in January 2009. "I'm really shocked. American troops invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. Dozens of witnesses were brought to the United States to testify about what happened on September 16, 2007. [45] Also, it is not clear whether the license revocation is permanent. The men, all military veterans working in Iraq for the private security contractor Blackwater, were convicted of massacring 14 civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified rampage of gunfire and. 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. [95][96] Heard, Liberty, and Slough were resentenced on September 5, 2019 to terms approximately half the original 30-year periods. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBIs most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. [41], On September 18, 2007, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said Blackwater is "not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq". Likewise, the civil case ran through North Carolina state court, was removed to federal court, and then sent back to state court. [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. [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/. [21][75] In the memorandum opinion, Judge Urbina ruled the cases against Slough, Liberty, Heard, Ball, and Slatten had been improperly built on testimony given in exchange for immunity;[76] that evidence included statements the guards had been compelled to give to State Department investigators, and as these statements would have been self-incriminating, they could not be used as evidence under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He never received treatment. He was shot while seated in a public bus. The Blackwater mercenaries were among the most flagrant killers in Iraq but hardly unique. What takes place doesnt mention Russian soldiers but others preventing citizens from escaping. He was driving on flat tires and with a shattered windshield. He was shot in the abdomen. [58] Nor is the US a signatory of the 1977 additional protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions in which Article 47 specifies that mercenaries are civilians who "take a direct part in the hostilities" and are "motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain". [47], The U.S. State Department said it planned to investigate what it called a "terrible incident". 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." They would turn Blackwater into roadkill. 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. Circuit Holds It Cruel and Unusual to Impose Mandatory Thirty-Year Sentence on Military Contractors for Gun Charge, "Former Blackwater contractor found guilty of murder in Iraq massacre", "Former Blackwater Guard Sentenced to Life for 2007 Baghdad Traffic-Circle Shooting", "Former Blackwater security contractor sentenced to life in Iraq shootings; In all, 10 men, two women and two boys, ages 9 and 11, were killed", "Blackwater Contractors Resentenced in 2007 Attack on Baghdad Civilians", "Survivors of Blackwater massacre in Iraq slam Trump's pardons for US guards behind killing", "Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Executive Grants of Clemency", "Relative of Blackwater victim in Iraq says pardons 'unfair', "UN criticises Trump's pardons for Blackwater guards jailed over Iraq killings", "I Sued Blackwater for the Massacre of Iraqi Civilians. That may be the overriding damage caused by these pardons. Volodymyr Zelenskyreassured his compatriots[2] yesterday: Ukraine is already welcoming foreign volunteers who are coming to our country. [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. 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. [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. 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. [12] On October 4, 2007, the U.S. House passed a bill that would make all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones subject to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act[65] [55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. The incident was allegedly resolved only after another Blackwater contractor pointed his weapon at the man still firing and ordered him to stop. While the #RussianOligarchs are vile post-Soviet capitalists, the hypocrisy of the US media is revealing. U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the incident. 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. 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. "This was Baghdad's Bloody Sunday," Dickinson told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on Wednesday. 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. [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. [36], On September 19, as a result of the incident, the United States temporarily suspended all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. The efforts of the investigators, the prosecutors, and the men and women who supported them was immeasurable. He was left with shrapnel in his body from the rocket launched grenade that was fired into his vehicle as he escaped. "I am overwhelmed with emotion at this fantastic news.". [99], Clemency caused outrage among Iraqi citizens and family members of the victims. Erik Prince said that he didn't believe the FBI had fully investigated the sources of all the used bullets in Nisour Square, arguing that it would have been helpful if the defense had been in possession of a complete ballistics report. Again, I knew my clients would be pleased to know that justice had been served and their rights had been protected. He suffered from his wounds for over a year until he died from a brain injury. The report found that the guards fired their weapons 195 times from the beginning of 2005 through the second week of September 2005. 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. Nicholas Slatten was sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted of murder, while Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted of manslaughter and weapons charges. The White House further stated that the Court of Appeals "ruled that additional evidence should have been presented at Mr Slatten's trial", and recently that prosecutors said "that the lead Iraqi investigator, who prosecutors relied heavily on to verify that there were no insurgent victims and to collect evidence, may have had ties to insurgent groups himself". We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. The shooting ended as suddenly as it started. The result of the long legal battle is that each man was ensured a fair trial, free of partiality and without unjust favor. Thats what lawyers do in the United States: We fight for those who cant fight for themselves. December 23, 2020 at 2:57 pm. It was as if someone had targeted the area in his SUV where a persons head would have been. It was funded with millions that.