[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. [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. The Nisour Square massacreoccurred on September 16, 2007, when employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (now Constellis), a private military companycontracted by the US government to provide security services in Iraq, shot at Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad, while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy. The ones who were killed on the street were shot running for their lives. 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. The American judiciary is fair and equitable. My clients assuredly feel ignored, mistreated, and used. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. 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. Likewise, the civil case ran through North Carolina state court, was removed to federal court, and then sent back to state court. Are they going to release me?". Majid survived because he was on the passenger side of the car and was protected from most of the barrage of bullets. [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. 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. Their route home was through Nisour Square. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. Luckily, before his SUV was attacked, Mohammed, his sister, and their children had time to duck into the car. 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. In his meetings with the high-ups in the US national security agencies, Erik Prince reportedly obtained a gentlemans promise, though without any documentary assurances due to the secretive nature of the Faustian pact, that he and his associates would not be held legally liable for the dirty work they do in the Ukraine proxy war. 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. 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. 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. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The only way these men could be brought to justice was in the United States. [24] The driver of the Kia was shot once in the head by a Blackwater contractor and was killed. Ali was slumped over against the glass. 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." [77] "Prosecutors should therefore have built their case against the men without them", a BBC report explained. ", "By investigating these crimes and completing legal proceedings, the US complied with its obligations under international law," she added. [16] The FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause. He could not understand what was happening or why. "On what basis did Trump depend on to release them? The man that just spoken to him was dead. The bullets rained through the roofs of cars, taxis and buses, he says. 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. A. A caption at the bottom of the screen states . 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. Now justice has been undone by the stroke of a pen," Sarah Holewinski, the organization's Washington director, said in a statement. Blackwater Mercenaries: NATOs Secret Weapon in Ukraine War, VT RADIO: Alternative Foreign Policy Talk, Khazarian Mafia at War: The Jewish Oligarch Who Planned the Terror, Russias Future Predicted by Well-Known Christian Saints, Most Front-Line Ukrainian Soldiers Killed Within 4 Hours, How Russia managed to survive Western sanctions, How War Began The Genesis of NATOs Coup in Ukraine , From Global Warming Denial to Holocaust Denial, On this day in 1940, Woody Guthrie writes This Land Is, Former U.S. President Carter to Hospice, Will Pariah Trump Attend State, Dr. Fauci Admits COVID Shots Didnt Have A Chance Of Controlling. The U.S. legal system, a pillar of fairness in the world, had worked. More were arriving in the backs of trucks. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBI's most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. The headrest next to him where his sister sat had a bullet hole through it. Mohammed was thrilled when the U.S. entered Baghdad years earlier in 2003. [14] The Iraqi government vowed to punish Blackwater. 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. Nicholas Slatten, 35, was a former security guard at the private US military firm Blackwater and was based in Baghdad. The civil lawsuit was filed as a wrongful death and personal injury suit against the men and companies responsible for my clients losses. He was shot in the abdomen. [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. 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. The key people in this have not spoken with investigators. Prosecutors asserted the heavily armed Raven 23 Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine-guns and grenade launchers. [15] The incident sparked at least five investigations, including one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During the litigation, an appeal was ongoing in the 4h Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. 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. "Paul Slough and his colleagues didn't deserve to spend one minute in prison," Brian Heberlig, a lawyer for Slough, told The Associated Press. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most publicized US crimes of the 8-year Iraq war. "Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians", 23 December 2020. Free shipping for many products! Ukraine War Anniversary: UN and China Work for Peace, Devilish Zelensky, Kiev Hid Its Dead Soldiers in the Ravines. [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. 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). [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". 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. [19] According to this account, the security team fired warning shots and then lethal fire at the Kia. Volodymyr Zelenskyreassured his compatriots[2] yesterday: Ukraine is already welcoming foreign volunteers who are coming to our country. Associated Press WASHINGTON Four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards were convicted and immediately jailed Wednesday for their roles in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisour Square. courts. 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. They beat citizens and scorn them. Bulk comes from private military companies of the Blackwater/Academi kind. hide caption. 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. "[32] According to Blackwater vice-president Marty Strong, the convoy was hit with "a large explosive device" and "repeated small arms fire" which disabled a vehicle. Blackwater is an American private military company . The majority of the Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq after the . Abraham Al Mafrage was a 70-year-old farmer and father of seven who was also shot in the head and died that day. Dozens of witnesses were brought to the United States to testify about what happened. Nicky Woolf in New York. 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. He was shot through the roof of his car as the Blackwater convoy drove past firing down into traffic. 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. Thats all it takes to support the journalism you rely on. ", "After years of waiting, the victims finally saw justice served when these men were convicted," she said in an email. That may be the overriding damage caused by these pardons. Extending the hand of friendship, Russia significantly drawdown its forces along the western border before the summit last year. ", Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics, Jasem Mohammed Hashem, who was working as a police officer when he was shot in the head in the attack, was also disappointed by Trump's decision to free the men who, he said, "opened fire randomly at the citizens.". The four armored vehicles drove away. "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 . This includes the right to see perpetrators serve punishments proportionate to the seriousness of their conduct. 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. It was an honor to represent these victims and their families. 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. These men will now be free, despite their crimes, and they will not serve the time in prison they deserved. [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. 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. These convictions happened under the Obama Administration. "I don't know what I did to Blackwater," Kinani told ABC News. 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. Blackwater was founded by ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince in 1997 as a shooting range and military training ground in Moyock, North Carolina. 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. Again be warned it is ugly. [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. "Today we were surprised that the American president issued a decision to pardon these criminals, murderers and thugs," Salman said, speaking from Baghdad.