blackwater mercenaries massacre

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. 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. The only way these men could be brought to justice was in the United States. Opinion | Trump's Most Disgusting Pardons - The New York Times Their bodies were beaten and burned, with their charred corpses then dragged through the city streets before being hanged over a bridge crossing the Euphrates River. 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. 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. 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. Or should I say Why is he still breathing? 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. As he was leaving, his youngest son, who was affectionately given the nickname Alawi, asked to go with his father. As many as 504 children, women and older men were killed by a US infantry company, members of which also raped numerous women and girls. The American judiciary is fair and equitable. The Blackwater Shooting (2007) | The New York Times - YouTube Trump pardons Blackwater killers for Nisour Square massacre 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. It is unfortunate and sad that those efforts have now been wasted. A caption at the bottom of the screen states . 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. The risk is now that the U.S., who has a presence worldwide, has exposure for how they might be treated or what people of other countries might think could happen or would happen if war crimes are committed by U.S. citizens abroad. . Covert Operations In Vietnam: The Incomplete History of US-Norway Collaboration. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. security contractors who had previously been sentenced over the death of 17 Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisur Square massacre . Trump's Blackwater Guard Pardons Cause Shock And Dismay : NPR Majid survived because he was on the passenger side of the car and was protected from most of the barrage of bullets. It was his business partner who lay in the pool of blood and was repeatedly shot. Their route home was through Nisour Square. The Associated Press contributed to this report. [1][2][3] The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States. We dont have ads, so we depend on our members 35,000 and counting to help us hold the powerful to account. They beat citizens and scorn them. 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 bullets rained through the roofs of cars, taxis and buses, he says. 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. 15 years after US Blackwater mercenaries massacred civilians in Baghdad [36] Several Iraqi and American investigations have been conducted into the incident. [77] "Prosecutors should therefore have built their case against the men without them", a BBC report explained. Mohammed had not been shot. [34], In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Blackwater's rights to conduct work in Iraq were temporarily suspended. On January 31, 2009, the U.S. State Department notified Blackwater that it would not be renewing its security contract with the company. He was left with shrapnel in his body from the rocket launched grenade that was fired into his vehicle as he escaped. He told NPR on Wednesday that he was shocked by Trump's pardons he himself had made trips to the U.S. to give testimony in the proceedings against the four. When Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten was tried and convicted for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, the U.S. legal system determined that he needed a new trial. Trump issued pardons for all four men on Tuesday. Why did it happen? Mohammed was thrilled when the U.S. entered Baghdad years earlier in 2003. The ones who were killed on the street were shot running for their lives. The report found that the guards fired their weapons 195 times from the beginning of 2005 through the second week of September 2005. Mohammed and his sister screamed for their children to get down. 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. That notion has now been shown to be false, Dickinson says. The massacre took place in 2007, when the four were working as guards for Blackwater, a private military contractor, on an assignment in Baghdad. 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. [82][20] On June 5, 2012, the US Supreme Court declined to review the Appeal Court ruling, allowing the trial to proceed. Prince strongly criticized the way in which federal authorities had handled the investigation and disputed the claims that U.S. or Blackwater personnel were to blame for the shootings. During the litigation, an appeal was ongoing in the 4h Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. Rogers. Machine gunfire would cause his lifeless body to shake in his pool of blood. Ukrainian POW Unveils, Russian forces eliminating Ukrainian saboteurs that violated border, Greetings from Oujda, Morocco, the City of Mosques, VT RADIO: Exposing East Palestine Train Derailment Disaster with VTs, VT RADIO: Foreign Policy Gone Mad with VTs Senior Editor, VT RADIO: UFOs, Aliens, & Chinese Balloons with VTs Jack, Many Predicted NATO Expansion Would Lead to War. [54] He served one tour in Iraq before being hired as a Personal Security Specialist in Iraq. USA: Four Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians ", 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. He was in the car next to Mohammed. 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. [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. By Andrew Emett - August 16, 2019 1269 SOURCE NationofChange The hallways were full. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBI's most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. As Raven 23 was departing Nisour Square, several members continued to discharge their weapons, causing additional civilian deaths and injuries. 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. "The victims' families finally saw some measure of justice when these men were convicted in 2014 and sentenced to prison. 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. A former security guard working for US mercenary firm Blackwater has been found guilty of murder for his role in a notorious massacre of unarmed civilians in downtown Baghdad in 2007. [89][90][91] The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's fractured per curiam decision first found that Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act authorized the prosecutions, over the partial dissent of Judge Janice Rogers Brown. 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. The incident was allegedly resolved only after another Blackwater contractor pointed his weapon at the man still firing and ordered him to stop. Our civil case resulted in a resolution that was acceptable to the parties. [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. 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. [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]. Luckily, before his SUV was attacked, Mohammed, his sister, and their children had time to duck into the car. AP The My Lai massacre took place on 16 March 1968. Former Blackwater guards sentenced for massacre of unarmed Iraqi A burnt car at the site where Blackwater guards opened fire on a crowd in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2007. Being so close to the Green Zone, he thought someone important might be entering or leaving the area. Trump's pardon of Blackwater 'Four' highlights deep divisions over Iraq ", Human Rights Watch says the pardons "show contempt for the rule of law.". Who would be responsible for the myopic and vindictive policy of providing anti-aircraft munitions to Ukraines irregular militias once Kyiv falls and those MANPADS are found in black markets posing a grave risk to civilian airlines across the globe? How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters werent on the beat? "Victims of gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law also have the right to a remedy. "This was Baghdad's Bloody Sunday," Dickinson told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on Wednesday. Dozens of witnesses were brought to the United States to testify about what happened. 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.

Waltham Forest Premises Licence Register, Anderson Tuftex Hardwood Installation Instructions, Norway National Parks Jobs, Articles B