blackwater mercenaries massacre

The Blackwater guards were firing indiscriminately. 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. More were arriving in the backs of trucks. The 14 victims killed by the Blackwater guards on trial were listed as Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubiay, Mahassin Mohssen Kadhum Al-Khazali, Osama Fadhil Abbas, Ali Mohammed Hafedh Abdul Razzaq, Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Qasim Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Saadi Ali Abbas Alkarkh, Mushtaq Karim Abd Al-Razzaq, Ghaniyah Hassan Ali, Ibrahim Abid Ayash, Hamoud Saeed Abttan, Uday Ismail Ibrahiem, Mahdi Sahib Nasir and Ali Khalil Abdul Hussein. Majid Al Kareem was 51 years old when he was shot. It wasnt. Constellis did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 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. On January 31, 2009, the U.S. State Department notified Blackwater that it would not be renewing its security contract with the company. ", Trump Grants Slew Of Pardons, Including To George Papadopoulos And Duncan Hunter, Blackwater Guards Found Guilty In 2007 Shootings In Iraq, Lawyer For Victims' Families On Trump Pardoning 4 Former Blackwater Contractors. on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadnt done it? [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. [41], On September 18, 2007, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said Blackwater is "not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq". [47], The U.S. State Department said it planned to investigate what it called a "terrible incident". That wasnt unusual. "Pardoning them contributes to impunity and has the effect of emboldening others to commit such crimes in the future. [95][96] Heard, Liberty, and Slough were resentenced on September 5, 2019 to terms approximately half the original 30-year periods. Likewise, the civil case ran through North Carolina state court, was removed to federal court, and then sent back to state court. [19] A Blackwater spokeswoman responded to the findings by saying Blackwater "supports the stringent accountability of the industry. They then set off stun grenades to clear the scene. The four were convicted at then VP Joe Biden's insistence, and were serving jail terms. Rogers. Dec. 24, 2020 Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani with a photo of his 9-year-old son, Ali, who was killed by Blackwater. The man that just spoken to him was dead. The civil lawsuit was filed as a wrongful death and personal injury suit against the men and companies responsible for my clients losses. That day changed my life forever. 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. Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted six years ago in the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians and the wounding of 17 others. It wasnt unusual for regular U.S. Army convoys to stop traffic. Mohammed was a businessman dealing in auto salvage. During the litigation, an appeal was ongoing in the 4h Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. Only. [54], Radio logs released in December 2008 seemed to affirm that the guards had been responding to an attack on September 16. [99], Clemency caused outrage among Iraqi citizens and family members of the victims. Bulk comes from private military companies of the Blackwater/Academi kind. The Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul stated that the killings were unprovoked. The U.N. Human Rights Office says it's "deeply concerned" by the pardons. The efforts of the investigators, the prosecutors, and the men and women who supported them was immeasurable. [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". 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. What Is Blackwater? 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. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each. "[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. Despite having immense firepower at its disposal that could readily turn the tide in conflicts as protracted as Syrias proxy war, the Russian advance in Ukraine has been slower than expected according to most estimates because Russia is only targeting military infrastructure and doing all it can to minimize collateral damage, particularly needless civilian losses in the former Soviet republic whose majority population is sympathetic to Russia. [2] Reactions [ edit] An ambulance was called, and Ali and Mohammad were rushed to the other side of town. Blackwater is an American private military company . He was told that he had to go to a neurologic hospital on the other side of Baghdad. Russian-American political scientist Malek Dudakov called the shooting a landmark event and a major international scandal. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. 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. hide caption. Not a one! "How are these criminals released after they killed 17 innocent people?" Blackwater mercenaries committed a massacre. . It was chaotic. Thats all it takes to support the journalism you rely on. The logs depicted "a hectic eight minutes in which the guards repeatedly reported incoming gunfire from insurgents and Iraqi police". But Trump reached a peace agreement with the Taliban and then lost the re-election bid before he could consider the bizarre proposal. RT has asked experts to share their thoughts on what the incident meant for Washington's Middle East policy and the likelihood of another tragedy like this. [79] Three weeks later, Vice President Joe Biden, who was overseeing U.S. policy in Iraq, promised Iraqi leaders the U.S. would appeal the dismissal of these charges. When Mohammed looked to his right, the driver of the car next to him shouted that the soldiers had just shot into another car in front of them. It remains unclear whether the team member mistook the civilians for insurgents. I was thinking the same thing about the Chechens a few days ago. 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). "These are four innocent guys, and it is completely justified," Bill Coffield, a lawyer for Evan Liberty, told the AP. I sued Blackwater, its founder Erik Prince, and the four men who were convicted of murder, manslaughter, or weapons charges in a civil lawsuit filed in North Carolina, the home of Blackwaters headquarters and training facility in Moyock. 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. [14] The Iraqi government vowed to punish Blackwater. The My Lai massacre took place on 16 March 1968. Mohammed turned his bullet-riddled SUV around and drove back to the closest hospital only a few blocks behind him. His mother also suffered a stroke, he added. "The ministry believes that this decision did not take into account the seriousness of the crime committed and was inconsistent with the U.S. administration's declared commitment to the values of human rights, justice, and the rule of law, and regrettably ignores the dignity of the victims," it said. The bullets rained through the roofs of cars, taxis and buses, he says. The Blackwater mess has roiled Capitol Hill and shined light on the many questions surrounding the legal status, management, oversight and accountability of the private military force in Iraq,. ", Human Rights Watch says the pardons "show contempt for the rule of law.". In 2013, Academi subsidiary International Development Solutions received an approximately $92million contract for State Department security guards. Machine gunfire tore through his body. [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]. 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. ", "After years of waiting, the victims finally saw justice served when these men were convicted," she said in an email. "The victims' families finally saw some measure of justice when these men were convicted in 2014 and sentenced to prison. Mohammed would look to see what was happening. He was shot through the roof of his car as the Blackwater convoy drove past firing down into traffic. Dozens of witnesses were brought to the United States to testify about what happened on September 16, 2007. Bullets were everywhere. When Slattens conviction was overturned, I was concerned that the case would be ignored. Ukraine War Anniversary: UN and China Work for Peace, Devilish Zelensky, Kiev Hid Its Dead Soldiers in the Ravines. [82][20] On June 5, 2012, the US Supreme Court declined to review the Appeal Court ruling, allowing the trial to proceed. He received poor treatment because his injuries were less life threatening, but he was left with a disfigured and useless arm. It was his business partner who lay in the pool of blood and was repeatedly shot. How is Eric Prince still breathing? Trumps pardon of the Blackwater mercenaries who murdered 14 Iraqi civilians at Nisour Square shows the world what justice means in the United States. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex, and petro-imperialism. Before VT Nuclear Education: The Beirut Nuclear Coverup, The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia. 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. Its worth recalling that before the Biden-Putin summit at Geneva last June, Russia had a similar troop build-up along Ukraines borders. The incident was allegedly resolved only after another Blackwater contractor pointed his weapon at the man still firing and ordered him to stop. [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. 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. That notion has now been shown to be false, Dickinson says. "Today we were surprised that the American president issued a decision to pardon these criminals, murderers and thugs," Salman said, speaking from Baghdad. It was as if someone had targeted the area in his SUV where a persons head would have been. [54] He enlisted in 1999, and served in Bosnia with the 3rd Infantry Division. However, after "Raven 23" entered Nisour Square, Watson was ordered to "lock down the traffic circle to expedite the travel of [the other Blackwater team]". Volodymyr Zelenskyreassured his compatriots[2] yesterday: Ukraine is already welcoming foreign volunteers who are coming to our country. It looks at the rise of private security contractors such as Blackwater in the era of modern warfare. The order did not say when the suspension would expire. [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. [62] After a group of Iraqi ministers backed the Iraqi Interior Ministry's decision to shut down Blackwater USA's operations in Iraq,[29] Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on the U.S. government to end its contract with Blackwater[39] and called on Blackwater to pay the families $8million in compensation. 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.. The Blackwater guards included Nicholas Slatten, who was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder for his role in the 2007 Nisoor Square massacre, when he and other . Erik Prince, chair of the Prince Group LLC and Blackwater USA, holds up a picture showing the effect of a car bomb while testifying during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Oct. 2, 2007 in Washington, D.C. Mohammed was going to visit his sister and her children. [I]f such a thing happened in America or Britain, would the American president or American citizens accept it? 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. Paul Dickinson[emailprotected]farrin.com. [48] According to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised a "fair and transparent" investigation into the incident. Being so close to the Green Zone, he thought someone important might be entering or leaving the area. My clients assuredly feel ignored, mistreated, and used. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most prominent events of the US-Iraq conflict, raising doubts about America's true intentions in the region. It was not an easy path in either the civil or criminal legal system. 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". [41] Senate Democratic leaders said they planned to pass similar legislation as soon as possible. Adela Sulimanis a London-based reporter for NBC News Digital. "I'm really shocked. [54] He received an honorable discharge in 2002 and then enlisted in the Texas National Guard. Iraqi traffic police initially tried to wave down the Blackwater men that there was no threat, but they too had to run for cover. Justice Blackwater mercenary sentenced to life in prison On Wednesday, Slatten was sentenced to life in federal prison for initiating a massacre that left 14 Iraqi civilians dead. As he was leaving, his youngest son, who was affectionately given the nickname Alawi, asked to go with his father. 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. Because any state, particularly those pursuing socialist policies, that dares to challenge the Western monopoly over global trade and economic policies is internationally isolated and its national economy goes bankrupt over a period of time. [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. They beat citizens and scorn them. By Andrew Emett - August 16, 2019 1269 SOURCE NationofChange 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. More than 3,000 troops remain in Iraq, according to defense officials, with a drawdown scheduled for January. 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. U.S. troops were coming under fire in Baghdad and major Iraqi cities from the resistance forces. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. No wonder Russia formally issued an ultimatum on Tuesday, March 1, that it would target the hub of covert warfare. [66] Howard Krongard, who was appointed Inspector General of the U.S. State Department in 2005,[67] resigned in December 2007 after he was accused by the House Oversight Committee of improperly interfering with investigations into the Blackwater Baghdad shootings. https://www.ournewearthnews.com/2022/03/04/massacre-in-ukraine-caught-on-camera-and-probably-still-unfolding-viewer-discretion-advised-please-pray/. [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. For those of you who are not aware, Erik Prince (Blackwater/Academi) personally sold to the CIA the concept of a mercenary army to conduct hybrid war ops and/or crypto-guerrilla war against Russia. [10][11] The next day, Blackwater Worldwide's license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked. Donald Trump has pardoned the four contractors jailed over the killing of 14 civilians. The massacre resulted in the deaths of 17 unarmed Iraqis and wounded at least 20 others. [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. Raven 23 "returned defensive fire" and withdrew from Nisour Square with one of its BearCat vehicles in tow. Nasser, who attended the 2014 trial in the United States, said his brother's death had broken his father's heart. Despite the public display of uncharacteristic valor by sporting military fatigues and flaunting images and video clips of soldiers proudly standing beside caches of MANPADS and Javelins on social media, Ukraines conscript army was so frightened following Russias military intervention that it wanted to surrender territory and opted instead for mounting guerrilla warfare by adopting hit-and-run tactics from the safety of border regions of Poland and Romania. The Machiavellian plan of NATOs military strategists is to establish refugee settlements with the humanitarian assistance in the border regions of Ukraines neighboring countries Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, and then provide guerrilla warfare training and lethal arms to all able-bodied men of military age in order to bleed Russias security forces in the protracted irregular warfare. 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. In their view, this confirmed that they were under attack by a vehicle bomb, whereupon they fired at the car, killing both people in it as well as the Iraqi policeman. [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. Blackwater has been renamed and falls under the Constellis group of companies, a risk management business formed in 2010. Why Is Assange in Jail and Not Seymour Hersh? 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 . Defense lawyers for the four veterans, who were working as contractors for the State Department at the time of the killings, argued that they had returned fire only after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. The headrest next to him where his sister sat had a bullet hole through it. [56], On April 1, 2011, the Associated Press reported on Erik Prince's seven-hour testimony about what allegedly transpired. [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. Trump pardons ex-campaign aide and disgraced Republican lawmakers, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. 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. [37], Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which held hearings on the use of Private Security Contractors in February 2007, said his committee would hold hearings "to understand what has happened and the extent of the damage to U.S. security interests". I know that each of them placed great faith in the U.S. legal system. 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. WaPo says, 'Investigators for the military and the FBI later described . [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. The hallways were full. On Tuesday, President Trump pardoned four former Blackwater contractors convicted in the killings. Their belief in our legal system was misplaced. Then-Vice President Joe Biden held a press conference to tell the citizens of Iraq that they would not be abandoned. Before Nord Stream Sabotage, VT RADIO: Exposing East Palestine Train Derailment Disaster with VTs Jack Heart, Dr. Fauci Admits COVID Shots Didnt Have A Chance Of Controlling The Pandemic, More Home Care Services Needed for Military Veterans, VA is Lying Facebook Group is Social Media Done Right, Pregnant Dog Found Starving to Death in Cage Needs Help to be Reunited With Marine Who Rescued Her, Healthy Eating Options More Accessible to Military Community through the Exchange, Israels Illegal Violent Occupation: When De-Escalate Means Ramp Up, Citizen Kane Rupert Murdoch Openly Admits Fox News is Complete Bullshit. "[21] Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal. He was left with shrapnel in his body from the rocket launched grenade that was fired into his vehicle as he escaped. That may be the overriding damage caused by these pardons. "I don't know what I did to Blackwater," Kinani told ABC News. 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.

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