blackwater mercenaries massacre

"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. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex, and petro-imperialism. [18][30] Iraqi investigators also alleged that Blackwater helicopters fired into the cars from the air, as at least one car had bullet holes in its roof; Blackwater has denied any of its aerial units discharged weapons. It remains unclear whether the team member mistook the civilians for insurgents. Covert Operations In Vietnam: The Incomplete History of US-Norway Collaboration. Blackwater Mercenaries Filmed on a Rampage in Iraq & Shooting Civilians from WarPosting After being leaked by a former employee of the notorious PMC, the footage dated April 2006 was featured in a piece called "The Warrior Class" by Charles Glass. [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. Iraqi authorities say 17 people were killed; the Department of Justice has said the total was 14. [63], A U.S. judge's decision to dismiss all charges against Blackwater on January 1, 2010, sparked outrage in the Arab world. The My Lai massacre took place on 16 March 1968. The traffic circle, Nisour Square, was only a block away from one of the main entrance gates to Baghdads Green Zone. courts. The American judiciary is fair and equitable. 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. [19] According to this account, the security team fired warning shots and then lethal fire at the Kia. 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 notion has now been shown to be false, Dickinson says. 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. The security industry has evolved drastically since those events, and under the direction of new ownership and leadership, Academi has invested heavily in compliance and ethics programmes, training for our employees, and preventative measures to strictly comply with all US and local government laws.. Mohammed kept seeing the man on the ground next to him being fired upon as he lay dead. 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. 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. On January 31, 2009, the U.S. State Department notified Blackwater that it would not be renewing its security contract with the company. I Sued Blackwater for the Massacre of Iraqi Civilians. Trump Just hide caption. Slatten faced a potential sentence of life in prison. Three Ex-Blackwater Guards Are Resentenced in Iraq War Massacre The men will serve about half of their original 30-year sentences for their roles in a 2007 shooting of unarmed civilians in Iraq . 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. 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. While the #RussianOligarchs are vile post-Soviet capitalists, the hypocrisy of the US media is revealing. The pardons could damage the United States' reputation abroad, as they undo the significance of the convictions, which had demonstrated that U.S. military contractors could be held accountable if they conducted criminal actions. It was chaotic. [2] 16,000 volunteers coming to Ukraine, Zelensky: https://www.rt.com/russia/551149-zelensky-ukraine-foreign-fighters/. 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. The bullets rained through the roofs of cars, taxis and buses, he says. [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. 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. [25][31], The account by the Blackwater firm differed from the Iraqi government's account; Blackwater's account stated the driver of the Kia sedan had kept driving toward the convoy, ignoring verbal orders, hand signals, and water bottles thrown at the car, and continued to approach even when fired upon. Ukraine War Anniversary: UN and China Work for Peace, Devilish Zelensky, Kiev Hid Its Dead Soldiers in the Ravines. Blackwater Guards Found Guilty in 2007 Iraq Killings That day destroyed me completely, Kinani said. 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. "Paul Slough and his colleagues didn't deserve to spend one minute in prison," Brian Heberlig, a lawyer for Slough, told The Associated Press. October 22 2014, 9:58 a.m. A federal jury in Washington, D.C., returned guilty verdicts against four . He was ensured a fair trial and convicted for his crimes. 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. "Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians", 23 December 2020. 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. It wasnt unusual for regular U.S. Army convoys to stop traffic. In addition to the Kinani family, I represented five other families and victims. The ones who were killed on the street were shot running for their lives. [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. Again, I knew my clients would be pleased to know that justice had been served and their rights had been protected. "These four individuals were given sentences ranging from 12 years to life imprisonment, including on charges of first-degree murder," spokesperson Marta Hurtado said in a statement. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBI's most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. 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. It was as if someone had targeted the area in his SUV where a persons head would have been. 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. The September 16, 2007 shootings by Blackwater mercenaries left 14 Iraqis dead and wounded 18 others in Baghdad's Nisour Square. The Blackwater guards were firing indiscriminately. The majority of the Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq after the . 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. 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. 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. Mohammed knew his sons injuries were fatal, but he had to try. [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. 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. [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. The U.S. remains one of the notable holdouts of the 2001 UN treaty known in full as the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries and it is unlikely we will ever join. "With those sentences reversed by the stroke of a pen, who will trust the American justice system again?". The U.N. Human Rights Office says it's "deeply concerned" by the pardons. ", "After years of waiting, the victims finally saw justice served when these men were convicted," she said in an email. . The Nisour Square massacre was one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. This includes the right to see perpetrators serve punishments proportionate to the seriousness of their conduct. Volodymyr Zelenskyreassured his compatriots[2] yesterday: Ukraine is already welcoming foreign volunteers who are coming to our country. The four were convicted at then VP Joe Biden's insistence, and were serving jail terms. 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. 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. Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes [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. [16] The FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause. [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. [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. [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". After capturing Kherson yesterday, Russian forces even apprehended several suspicious and armed foreign nationals who are currently being interrogated by Russias military intelligence GRU. There are numerous reported incidents of mass murder conducted by US soldiers, special forces. I was thinking the same thing about the Chechens a few days ago. 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. Nisour Square massacre - Wikipedia They left in 2011 but returned in 2014 after the Islamic State militant group overran large parts of the country. [89][90][91] The panel also recommended that Slatten undergo a re-trial on the grounds that it was unjustifiable to try him with his co-defendants, and that he should have been tried separately. He received poor treatment because his injuries were less life threatening, but he was left with a disfigured and useless arm. Mohammed quickly got out of the car and saw blood inside the rear window. 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. 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. A rocket grenade was fired into the car next to him. As he was leaving, his youngest son, who was affectionately given the nickname Alawi, asked to go with his father. 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. When Mohammed saw the convoy enter the traffic circle, he initially thought they were regular U.S. Army members. Blackwater and the Corporate Mercenaries who've - NationofChange He thought they had been given a miracle after he saw so many others killed. Not a one! 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. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. They claimed they were fired on, but prosecutors said the Blackwater guards opened fire first. [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". How is Eric Prince still breathing? The report further said that Blackwater had reported that its forces fired first in over 80 percent of the cases. A caption at the bottom of the screen states . [77] "Prosecutors should therefore have built their case against the men without them", a BBC report explained. 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. [80], On April 22, 2011, after closed-door testimony, a federal appeals-court panel revived the Justice Department's prosecution of the former Blackwater Worldwide guards by reinstating the manslaughter charges against the five men. Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq [45] Also, it is not clear whether the license revocation is permanent. Blackwater mercenaries committed a massacre. 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. 'I hope she's scarred for life' Recalling my time as a Blackwater [9], Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. Abraham Al Mafrage was a 70-year-old farmer and father of seven who was also shot in the head and died that day. Boslego also said the attack had a negative effect on our mission, [an] adverse effect It made our relationship with the Iraqis in general more strained.. That may be the overriding damage caused by these pardons. Family members of Iraqis killed by Blackwater contractors condemn Dec. 24, 2020 Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani with a photo of his 9-year-old son, Ali, who was killed by Blackwater. "How are these criminals released after they killed 17 innocent people?" https://t.co/O88HKyb3wd, Kevin Reed | wsws.org (@KevinReedWSWS) March 4, 2022. "I don't know what I did to Blackwater," Kinani told ABC News. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they responded. [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. Raven 23 "returned defensive fire" and withdrew from Nisour Square with one of its BearCat vehicles in tow. [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. A. Now they'll go free. [24] The driver of the Kia was shot once in the head by a Blackwater contractor and was killed. Four Blackwater operatives were found guilty one of murder in a 2007 Baghdad massacre. 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." https://www.ournewearthnews.com/2022/03/04/massacre-in-ukraine-caught-on-camera-and-probably-still-unfolding-viewer-discretion-advised-please-pray/. Hassan Salman is among the Iraqis who were shot during the ambush. The efforts of the investigators, the prosecutors, and the men and women who supported them was immeasurable. [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. [21]:116[22] The Blackwater commander, Jimmy Watson, had received an order to stand by and not leave the Green Zone upon reaching a checkpoint, but he made a "tactical decision" to advance to Nisour Square after waiting for a few minutes; upon informing the Blackwater Tactical Operations Center of this, he was ordered to return to the Green Zone. How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. 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". ", Human Rights Watch says the pardons "show contempt for the rule of law.". courts. [1][2][3] The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States. He was shot while seated in a public bus. 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. Dozens of witnesses were brought to the United States to testify about what happened on September 16, 2007. Hussein Saheb Nasser, 35, told NBC News by telephone from his home in Baghdad on Wednesday. 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. [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. Blackwater was founded by ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince in 1997 as a shooting range and military training ground in Moyock, North Carolina. 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. It wasnt. [34], In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Blackwater's rights to conduct work in Iraq were temporarily suspended. The State Department announced an American-Iraqi joint commission to investigate both the shooting and the broader issue of employing private security contractors. Dozens of witnesses were brought to the United States to testify about what happened. [2] Reactions [ edit] "These are four innocent guys, and it is completely justified," Bill Coffield, a lawyer for Evan Liberty, told the AP. 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