Finally, around 5 p.m., he phoned his brother who worked at the hospital closest to Nissour Square. [100] UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Marta Hurtado said that forgiveness "contributes to impunity and has the effect of encouraging others to commit such crimes in the future". Multiple civilian deaths linked to 2016-17 British airstrikes against IS in Mosul, Lives torn apart by British airstrikes in Mosul give lie to UKs perfect precision war, Onthe frontlines of the Iraq war 2003-08 in pictures, Theaccidental journalist who covered the war in Iraq, Annalena Baerbocks feminist foreign policy focuses minds in Iraq, Long shadow of US invasion of Iraq still looms over international order, Iraqi customs officials ordered to impose import ban on alcohol, Scores of Iraqis injured in anti-government protests in Baghdad, Who will protect us?: Baghdad residents wait out fighting as city grinds to halt. [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. 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.. 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. NBC News reports that they repainted and repaired their trucks in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, despite the fact that the repairs "essentially destroyed evidence" that would've shown if Blackwater was facing hostile gunfire. That lethal incident was a watershed moment that brought intense scrutiny to the problems caused by private contractors, which have effectively operated with impunity as they've brought violence and widespread ill will to US operations in Iraq. "I tried to be patient," he said. Raven 23's commander Jimmy Watson reportedly made the "tactical decision" to go to Nisour Square and block traffic for an evacuation route. One of the Blackwater guards reportedly screamed "No! courts. 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. "If you perceive marriage as half of your life, Mohasin was my best half," he said. Nisour Square massacre - Wikipedia Their first contract, awarded in June 2004, was for $100 million for one year. However, according to Reuters, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, claiming that "the U.S. government had recklessly violated the defendants' constitutional rights." According to Vox, investigators Jean C. Richter and Donald Thomas Jr. discovered, among other issues, that migrant workers were being used as guards for the Blackwater compound and Blackwater guards had neglected to even give them beds to sleep on in their living quarters. Blackwater has made more than $1.5 billion in "security" contracts in Iraq alone since 2003. [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. Blackwater was founded by ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince in 1997 as a shooting range and military training ground in Moyock, North Carolina. A rocket grenade was fired into one of the cars, killing its driver. The logs depicted "a hectic eight minutes in which the guards repeatedly reported incoming gunfire from insurgents and Iraqi police". Some of the Iraqis told me that they don't even care about the money. 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. the American security company Blackwater ("Black water") was founded in 1997, seal commando Erik Prince and shooting coach al Clark. The private military company branched structure consisting of more than a dozen offices reporting the managing organization Xe Services. And Blackwater didn't make the investigation easy. An Iraqi man who survived an infamous massacre of unarmed civilians by American security guards in Baghdad has condemned President Donald Trump's decision to pardon the men as "unjust . Blackwater's owner, Erik Prince, recently said his company is spending $2 million a month in legal . (An unrelated bombing in a nearby market cut the shopping trip short.) Four young women tourists are hunted by ruthless woodsmen in the Florida Everglades. [56], On April 1, 2011, the Associated Press reported on Erik Prince's seven-hour testimony about what allegedly transpired. [6][86] Bringing the weapons charges was disputed within the Justice Department, which initially opposed including them in the indictment. [97], On December 22, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump granted full presidential pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard. Human Rights Watch is a 501(C)(3)nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 13-2875808. [47], The U.S. State Department said it planned to investigate what it called a "terrible incident". His brother's wife had delivered their first child, a daughter, just 20 days earlier. A burnt car at the site where Blackwater guards opened fire on a crowd in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2007. I took Mr. Carroll's threat seriously. By 2007, the State Department started reviewing Blackwater's $1 billion contract and they discovered a slew of misconduct. Vigilance Elite: Blackwater 'Massacre' Was A Massacre of Justice 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. In November last year, he pardoned a former US army commando who was set to stand trial over the killing of a suspected Afghan bomb-maker, and a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to fire at three Afghans. In 2015, Slatten was sentenced to life in prison while Slough, Heard, and Liberty were sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. AFP. Ultimately, Blackwater repeatedly insisted that their guards "were fired upon and responded appropriately." [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. Rogers. [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. 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. 23 December 2020. [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. [6][85][86] Jurors sided with prosecutors' contention that the shooting was a criminal act, not a battlefield encounter gone wrong. The key people in this have not spoken with investigators. Meanwhile, although Moonen admitted that he was intoxicated, he maintained that he shot in self-defense. [3][84] Prosecutors stated they reached their decision after an "assessment of the admissible evidence against him". "[46] Hasan Jaber Salman, a lawyer who was one of the wounded, said that "no one did anything to provoke Blackwater" and that "as we turned back they opened fire at all cars from behind"[61] An Iraqi police officer who was directing traffic at the scene said Blackwater guards "became the terrorists" when they opened fire on civilians unprovoked, while a businessman said he wasn't seeking compensation but only "the truth" from the guards. The incident led to at least five investigations and although the Blackwater guards repeatedly claimed that their actions were justified, several of them came to the opposite conclusion. They just want to see those responsible punished. However, as The New York Times reports, "not one witness heard or saw any gunfire coming from Iraqis around the square." The film documents the use of chemical weapons, particularly the use of incendiary bombs, and alleges indiscriminate use of violence against civilians and children by military forces of the United States of America in the city of Fallujah in Iraq during the Fallujah Offensive of November 2004 . Within 10 days of the massacre, it appeared as though the State Department had already investigated the incident based on a report leaked to the media. The Blackwater guards also shot at cars, taxis, and buses. But the State Department representative kept insisting on a number. Black Water (2007 film) - Wikipedia 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. One of the men I met in Istanbul wrote me after I returned home. 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. Around this time, another Blackwater team of 15 guards known as Raven 23 headed out of the International Zone to offer support, despite the fact that, according to United States v. Slough, they were given an order "not to leave the Green Zone [also known as International Zone]." Blackwater in Baghdad: "It was a horror movie" - Human Rights Watch Instead, it appears as though the massacre was started by a single bullet fired by Nicholas Slatten, a Blackwater guard. According to The Seattle Times, the lawsuit was reportedly settled in January 2010, and the U.S. Department of Justice decided not to seek an indictment against Moonen. Blackwater Settles Massacre Lawsuit | The Nation As shootings in the square were not uncommon, it is unclear whether the shells were from the shooting in question or from other incidents. At the end of the day, none of the Blackwater guards deny what they did, they just deny that there was any wrongdoing. However, according to the Joint Audit of Blackwater Contract, the State Department offered little-to-no oversight of Blackwater's performance or cost, and often monthly invoices were "paid without adequate review of support documentation." [7][8] U.N. experts said this "violated U.S. obligations under international law". 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. [41], On September 18, 2007, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said Blackwater is "not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq". [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. None of the Iraqis we interviewed last month could describe their losses without breaking down in tears. It remains unclear whether the team member mistook the civilians for insurgents. [40] The US House passed a bill, titled the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, that would make all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones subject to prosecution by U.S. Trump's Blackwater Guard Pardons Cause Shock And Dismay : NPR Get updates on human rights issues from around the globe. 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. 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." [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". "I kept calling, but thought there must be some sort of cellphone interruption.". The scene as the Blackwater convoy exited the square was also described to the group of lawyers by Hooby, a 32-year-old bank employee who was there on lunch break, returning from a failed attempt to buy a gift for a friend's newborn. Blackwater mercenaries committed a massacre. Share this via LinkedIn [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. The incident was allegedly resolved only after another Blackwater contractor pointed his weapon at the man still firing and ordered him to stop. Blackwater has been one of the biggest recipients. He spent the next three days in the hospital and underwent major surgery on his right arm, which was fractured by a bullet. [54], Radio logs released in December 2008 seemed to affirm that the guards had been responding to an attack on September 16. If successful, it will be the first time the US government has held private security contractors criminally liable for abusive behavior directed at Iraqis. [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.
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