His mother also suffered a stroke, he added. In 2002, Blackwater received its first contract from the United States government. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. [54], Radio logs released in December 2008 seemed to affirm that the guards had been responding to an attack on September 16. Opinion | Trump's Most Disgusting Pardons - The New York Times Nasser, who attended the 2014 trial in the United States, said his brother's death had broken his father's heart. Mohammed and his sister screamed for their children to get down. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBIs most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. Blackwater Founder Remains Free and Rich While His Former Employees Go [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. [55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. [19] The three justifiable killings were those of the two passengers in the white Kia sedan and an unidentified Iraqi nearby. 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 . Trump issued pardons for all four men on Tuesday. An Iraqi policeman went over to the car, possibly to help the passenger, but the vehicle kept moving and it looked to the guards as if the policeman was pushing the car towards the Blackwater TST. I know that each of them placed great faith in the U.S. legal system. [I]f such a thing happened in America or Britain, would the American president or American citizens accept it? 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. 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.. [73], The trial was set for early 2010,[74] but the charges were dismissed by United States District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Ricardo Urbina on December 31, 2009, who ruled that the Justice Department had mishandled evidence and violated the guards' constitutional rights. "On what basis did Trump depend on to release them? 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. How is Eric Prince still breathing? In addition to the Kinani family, I represented five other families and victims. Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) March 1, 2022. [78] The opinion elaborated "the government failed to establish that the Iraqi witnesses it presented to the second grand jury were not in any way influenced by their previous exposure to the defendants' compelled statements. 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. security contractors who had previously been sentenced over the death of 17 Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisur Square massacre . "We've backed off that. It was chaotic. A rocket grenade was fired into the car next to him. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? 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." [3] Erik Prince provided weapons and aircraft to eastern Libyas warlord Khalifa Haftar: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/world/middleeast/libya-mercenaries-arms-embargo.html. The logs depicted "a hectic eight minutes in which the guards repeatedly reported incoming gunfire from insurgents and Iraqi police". [46] On September 21, CNN reported that Blackwater would resume normal operations the following day. 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". They left in 2011 but returned in 2014 after the Islamic State militant group overran large parts of the country. As Raven 23 was departing Nisour Square, several members continued to discharge their weapons, causing additional civilian deaths and injuries. 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. [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". [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. Likewise, the civil case ran through North Carolina state court, was removed to federal court, and then sent back to state court. Now justice has been undone by the stroke of a pen," Sarah Holewinski, the organization's Washington director, said in a statement. These convictions happened under the Obama Administration. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each. 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. They could not do anything for him. 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. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. Blackwater has been renamed and falls under the Constellis group of companies, a risk management business formed in 2010. ", "After years of waiting, the victims finally saw justice served when these men were convicted," she said in an email. The U.N. Human Rights Office says it's "deeply concerned" by the pardons. He was driving on flat tires and with a shattered windshield. Suddenly, bullets began to riddle Mohammeds car. It was his business partner who lay in the pool of blood and was repeatedly shot. 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. More were arriving in the backs of trucks. LONDON and BAGHDAD -- When news broke that Mohammed Kinani's son's killers, Blackwater private military contractors hired by the U.S. government in Baghdad, were pardoned Wednesday by President Trump, Kinani said it was like losing his 9-year-old boy all over again. Slatten, whom prosecutors said started the shooting, was sentenced to life in prison. Dickinson says that the victims' families are likely to feel let down and abandoned by the U.S. government. He saw the man next to him run. [2] 16,000 volunteers coming to Ukraine, Zelensky: https://www.rt.com/russia/551149-zelensky-ukraine-foreign-fighters/. 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 . The civil lawsuit was filed as a wrongful death and personal injury suit against the men and companies responsible for my clients losses. [25], A State Department spot report published the same day as the incident stated that eight to ten attackers opened fire on Raven 23 "from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi police uniforms" after the convoy had entered Nisour Square,[26] starting at 12:08p.m.[27] The report added that another Blackwater Tactical Support Team (TST 22), who had escorted the officials and TST 4 back to the Green Zone, was redirected to support Raven 23. 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. 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. Dec. 24, 2020 Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani with a photo of his 9-year-old son, Ali, who was killed by Blackwater. 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. [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. The September 16, 2007 shootings by Blackwater mercenaries left 14 Iraqis dead and wounded 18 others in Baghdad's Nisour Square. "Before he died, he went crazy as he used to go out into the street and whenever he saw a young man, he imagined that he was Mahdi," he said. The shooting ended as suddenly as it started. [41], On September 18, 2007, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said Blackwater is "not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq". When Mohammed saw the convoy enter the traffic circle, he initially thought they were regular U.S. Army members. A. 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. [42] A spokesman stated that the ban would last for the duration of the investigation, and that it would not be permanent. Before. It was an honor to represent these victims and their families. 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. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq increasingly relied on private contractors, Blackwater being only the most infamous. [3][84] Prosecutors stated they reached their decision after an "assessment of the admissible evidence against him". 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. [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. . "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. 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 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. 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. [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. It was funded with millions that. hide caption. Or should I say Why is he still breathing? Nassar Hamza was 67 years old when he was shot and wounded in the arm. The news shows the helicopter falling to the ground as it burns. [63] The suit was settled for an undisclosed sum in January 2010. "These are four innocent guys, and it is completely justified," Bill Coffield, a lawyer for Evan Liberty, told the AP. Trump Pardons Blackwater Contractors Who Killed Iraqis The My Lai massacre took place on 16 March 1968. Ali was the youngest of Blackwaters victims that day. 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. "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. [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. Trump's Blackwater Pardons Reveal Security Contractor - JURIST And none of the I.P. [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] [54] He enlisted in 1999, and served in Bosnia with the 3rd Infantry Division. Why Is Assange in Jail and Not Seymour Hersh? The killing of innocent civilians, including two young boys, sparked international outrage and public scrutiny into the use of private military companies . [29] Several sources have stated that the explosion was caused by a mortar round, though this is not reflected in the State Department's incident report. "It was obviously excessive", a U.S. military official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Washington Post. [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. Six of my Blackwater brethren contractors are on the helicopter going to Tikrit. 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. Former Blackwater mercenary convicted of Baghdad civilian massacre 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. 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. (L-r) Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten. 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. [28] Nicholas Slatten was found guilty of first-degree murder, and Slough, Liberty and Heard were found guilty of voluntary and attempted manslaughter charges, and of using a machine gun to commit a violent crime. As shootings in the square were not uncommon, it is unclear whether the shells were from the shooting in question or from other incidents. Iraqi traffic police initially tried to wave down the Blackwater men that there was no threat, but they too had to run for cover. [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. Blackwater mercenaries committed a massacre. A State Department employee who was walking into the department's Baghdad operations center on the day of the incident heard a radio call from the convoy: "Contact, contact, contact! Bullets were everywhere. A 20,000-strong mercenary army is being assembled in Poland. They then set off stun grenades to clear the scene. Only. He was shot through the roof of his car as the Blackwater convoy drove past firing down into traffic. 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. 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. And afterward, Iraqi citizens wanted to ensure that those who had done this were held responsible. Mohammed was thrilled when the U.S. entered Baghdad years earlier in 2003. "This was Baghdad's Bloody Sunday," Dickinson told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on Wednesday. The Nisour Square Massacre, in which Blackwater mercenaries fired hundreds of rounds in a crowded Baghdad traffic square, killing fourteen Iraqis, including ten women and two children, and . The man that just spoken to him was dead. [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/. Mohammed turned his bullet-riddled SUV around and drove back to the closest hospital only a few blocks behind him. He could not understand what was happening or why. Before VT Nuclear Education: The Beirut Nuclear Coverup, The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia. courts. Dozens of witnesses were brought to the United States to testify about what happened on September 16, 2007. Private Military Companies: Blackwater - Silent Professionals But Trump reached a peace agreement with the Taliban and then lost the re-election bid before he could consider the bizarre proposal. Further, besides advising and assisting the UAEs petro-monarchy in strengthening the police state, Erik Prince alsoreportedly provided[3] weapons and modified aircraft to eastern Libyas warlord and former CIA asset Khalifa Haftar, backed by Egypt and UAE, in his thwarted military campaign against the Tripoli government lasting from April 2019 to June 2020. 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. [54] He served one tour in Iraq before being hired as a Personal Security Specialist in Iraq. 'I hope she's scarred for life' Recalling my time as a Blackwater
Ralph Macchio Disease,
What Puppies Are In The Go Compare Advert,
Kevin Wilson Director,
David Bronner Soap Net Worth,
Maritime Security Jobs No Experience,
Articles B
