In fact, private military contractors in close coordination and consultation with covert operators from CIA and Western intelligence agencies are not only training Ukraines conscript forces in the use of caches of Stingers and Javelins provided by Germany and the rest of the European nations as military assistance to Ukraine but are also directing the whole defense strategy of Ukraine by taking an active part in combat operations in some of the most hard-fought battles against Russias security forces north of Kyiv and at Kharkiv and Donbas. [84], The other four went on trial starting on June 17, 2014;[5] ten weeks of testimony and 28 days of jury deliberations resulted in convictions for all four men on October 22, 2014. Victims were everywhere. [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.
Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes The result of the long legal battle is that each man was ensured a fair trial, free of partiality and without unjust favor. An ambulance was called, and Ali and Mohammad were rushed to the other side of town. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBIs most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. Although NATO powers did provide Stingers to their jihadist proxies that helped turn the tide in the Soviet-Afghan war in the eighties, since then, despite providing anti-tank munitions and rest of weapons to militant groups during the proxy wars in Libya and Syria, Western powers have consistently avoided providing MANPADS to proxy forces, because such deadly anti-aircraft munitions could become a long-term threat not only to military aircraft but also to civilian airlines. . He lay in the hallway for an hour before he died. The fire has since been extinguished after the plant was captured by Russian troops and no radiation leakage has been detected. Prosecutors asserted the heavily armed Raven 23 Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine-guns and grenade launchers. 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. President Donald Trump pardoned four former Blackwater mercenaries on Tuesday who had been convicted for their role in the Nisour Square massacre that left 14 people dead in Baghdad in 2007. The massacre took place in 2007, when the four were working as guards for Blackwater, a private military contractor, on an assignment in Baghdad. He despised Saddam Hussein and his oppressive and vindictive ways. courts.
Blackwater Founder Remains Free and Rich While His Former Employees Go The massacre resulted in the deaths of 17 unarmed Iraqis and wounded at least 20 others. "Pardoning them contributes to impunity and has the effect of emboldening others to commit such crimes in the future. "[51][52][53], On January 19, 2008, The New York Times reported that the contractor responsible for many of the deaths in the engagement, previously known only as "turret gunner no. [I]f such a thing happened in America or Britain, would the American president or American citizens accept it? ", Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics, Jasem Mohammed Hashem, who was working as a police officer when he was shot in the head in the attack, was also disappointed by Trump's decision to free the men who, he said, "opened fire randomly at the citizens.". "Paul Slough and his colleagues didn't deserve to spend one minute in prison," Brian Heberlig, a lawyer for Slough, told The Associated Press. 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. The order confines most Americans to a 3.5 square miles (9.1km2) area in the center of the city so that they are unable to visit other areas without traveling in a helicopter. )[60], Baghdad resident Halim Mashkoor told AP Television News, "We see the security firms doing whatever they want in the streets.
Trump Pardons Blackwater 4 for Nisour Square Massacre in Iraq, because 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. 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 . I was thinking the same thing about the Chechens a few days ago. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Four Blackwater security guards convicted in 2014 of carrying out a massacre of Iraqi civilians, sparking an international outcry over the use of mercenaries in war . Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they responded. A federal district court judge sentenced four former Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries to lengthy prison terms on Monday for their role in the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, Iraq in 2007. When Mohammed saw the convoy enter the traffic circle, he initially thought they were regular U.S. Army members. AP The man that just spoken to him was dead. [24] The driver of the Kia was shot once in the head by a Blackwater contractor and was killed. 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. "On what basis did Trump depend on to release them? That day changed my life forever. . [54] He received an honorable discharge in 2002 and then enlisted in the Texas National Guard.
Blackwater mercenaries on trial in US court for 2007 Iraq massacre [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". [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. While the #RussianOligarchs are vile post-Soviet capitalists, the hypocrisy of the US media is revealing. [19] The three justifiable killings were those of the two passengers in the white Kia sedan and an unidentified Iraqi nearby.
Private Military Companies: Blackwater - Silent Professionals When Slattens conviction was overturned, I was concerned that the case would be ignored. His sister was safe. [36] Several Iraqi and American investigations have been conducted into the incident. The Blackwater mercenaries were among the most flagrant killers in Iraq but hardly unique. My clients assuredly feel ignored, mistreated, and used. 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. In 2002, Blackwater received its first contract from the United States government. "These are four innocent guys, and it is completely justified," Bill Coffield, a lawyer for Evan Liberty, told the AP. FBI scientists couldn't match bullets from the square to guns carried by the Blackwater guards and FBI investigators found foreign cartridge cases of a kind not used by U.S. or Blackwater personnel. Shots were fired everywhere. [93], On December 19, 2018, Slatten was found guilty of murder[94] and again was sentenced to life in prison on August 14, 2019. "With those sentences reversed by the stroke of a pen, who will trust the American justice system again?". For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. The traffic circle, Nisour Square, was only a block away from one of the main entrance gates to Baghdads Green Zone. 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..
The Blackwater Shooting (2007) | The New York Times - YouTube Blackwater has been renamed and falls under the Constellis group of companies, a risk management business formed in 2010. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq increasingly relied on private contractors, Blackwater being only the most infamous. "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. 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. As shootings in the square were not uncommon, it is unclear whether the shells were from the shooting in question or from other incidents. 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. Ali was the youngest of Blackwaters victims that day. However, the company was allowed to continue to operate in Iraq until January 2009 when the U.S.Iraq Status of Forces Agreement took effect. He thought they had been given a miracle after he saw so many others killed. On January 31, 2009, the U.S. State Department notified Blackwater that it would not be renewing its security contract with the company. "[21] Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal. In his meetings with the high-ups in the US national security agencies, Erik Prince reportedly obtained a gentlemans promise, though without any documentary assurances due to the secretive nature of the Faustian pact, that he and his associates would not be held legally liable for the dirty work they do in the Ukraine proxy war. Six of my Blackwater brethren contractors are on the helicopter going to Tikrit. The bullets rained through the roofs of cars, taxis and buses, he says. 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. 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. Only. 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. "Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families," said Jelena Aparac, Chair . The committee was co-chaired by Abd al Qadir, the Iraqi Minister of Defense, and Patricia A. Butenis, the Charg d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. I felt I had done that, and I knew the prosecutors were doing that. [59] (The Protocol makes no distinction between defensive and offensive actions, but the U.S. does make such a distinction, in that it does not regard defensive actions by security guards to be combat. Blackwater Mercenaries: NATOs Secret Weapon in Ukraine War, VT RADIO: Alternative Foreign Policy Talk, Khazarian Mafia at War: The Jewish Oligarch Who Planned the Terror, Russias Future Predicted by Well-Known Christian Saints, Most Front-Line Ukrainian Soldiers Killed Within 4 Hours, How Russia managed to survive Western sanctions, How War Began The Genesis of NATOs Coup in Ukraine , From Global Warming Denial to Holocaust Denial, On this day in 1940, Woody Guthrie writes This Land Is, Former U.S. President Carter to Hospice, Will Pariah Trump Attend State, Dr. Fauci Admits COVID Shots Didnt Have A Chance Of Controlling. A rocket grenade was fired into the car next to him. The Nisour Square massacre was the FBI's most comprehensive and expensive criminal investigation since 9/11. "[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.
Trump's Blackwater Pardons Reveal Security Contractor - JURIST 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. 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. Monday's sentencing was. [9], Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. "I'm really shocked. In this 2007 video, witnesses shed light on the killing of 17 Iraqis by American contractors in Baghdad.Read the article here: http://nyti.ms/1u1cNzySubscrib. Or should I say Why is he still breathing? "I don't know what I did to Blackwater," Kinani told ABC News. How is Eric Prince still breathing? Thats what lawyers do in the United States: We fight for those who cant fight for themselves. None of the bullets the lab had available could be matched to the rifles used by the guards. 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. [2] 16,000 volunteers coming to Ukraine, Zelensky: https://www.rt.com/russia/551149-zelensky-ukraine-foreign-fighters/.
Former Blackwater mercenary convicted of Baghdad civilian massacre 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.
Blackwater Mercenaries: NATO's Secret Weapon in Ukraine War When #Blackwater mercenaries were murdering civilians in the #IraqWar, did these voices demand seizure of yachts owned by CEO Erik Prince? [40], On October 11, 2007, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed suit against Blackwater USA under the Alien Tort Claims Act on behalf of an injured Iraqi and the families of three of the seventeen Iraqis who were killed by Blackwater employees during the September 16, 2007, shooting incident. U.S. troops were coming under fire in Baghdad and major Iraqi cities from the resistance forces. "The victims' families finally saw some measure of justice when these men were convicted in 2014 and sentenced to prison. 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." ", Human Rights Watch says the pardons "show contempt for the rule of law.". Following Russias intervention in Ukraine, Germany alone hasproudly bragged[4] of dispatching caches of 500 US-made surface-to-air Stinger missiles and 2,700 Soviet-era, shoulder-fired Strelamissiles to Ukraines conscript military. They claimed they were fired on, but prosecutors said the Blackwater guards opened fire first. Trump pardons ex-campaign aide and disgraced Republican lawmakers, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. 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. [1][2][3] The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States. 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. Its worth recalling that before the Biden-Putin summit at Geneva last June, Russia had a similar troop build-up along Ukraines borders. [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. Mohammed was glad Saddams reign of terror was finally ending. Constellis did not immediately respond to requests for comment. "How are. It is unfortunate and sad that those efforts have now been wasted. [63], A U.S. judge's decision to dismiss all charges against Blackwater on January 1, 2010, sparked outrage in the Arab world.
[55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. He had tried to run but was lying in a pool of blood killed by machine gunfire from the armored cars. "This was Baghdad's Bloody Sunday," Dickinson told NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on Wednesday. They beat citizens and scorn them.
Blackwater Mercenaries Sentenced for 2007 Iraq Massacre That wasnt unusual. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - On Tuesday, Trump the Mad pardoned 4 Blackwater mercenaries who killed 14 Iraqi civilians, including a nine-year-old boy, with indiscriminate fire at Nisour Square in downtown Baghdad on September 14, 2007. 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. 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. [72] A sixth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway of California, struck a deal with prosecutors on December 4, 2008 and pleaded guilty to one count each of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter, and aiding and abetting,[72][3] and agreed to testify against the other five men. The Kia continued to roll forward after the driver was killed, according to an eyewitness, and Raven 23 continued to fire on it, killing the passenger (the driver's mother); eventually, the Kia was struck by a grenade and was incinerated. In 2013, Academi subsidiary International Development Solutions received an approximately $92million contract for State Department security guards. Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. "This incident motivated the Iraqi authorities to seek the withdrawal of American troops from the country. [44] Blackwater's operations on behalf of the U.S. Department of State and the CIA may be unaffected by license revocation. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each. 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]". [54] He enlisted in 1999, and served in Bosnia with the 3rd Infantry Division.
The Untold Truth Of The Blackwater Massacre - Grunge 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. Likewise, the civil case ran through North Carolina state court, was removed to federal court, and then sent back to state court. ", "By investigating these crimes and completing legal proceedings, the US complied with its obligations under international law," she added. 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. Then one of his sisters children said that Ali was hurt. [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. "We've backed off that. Dark Truth Exposed: East Palestine Rail Disaster, BOAC 707 Sabotage, Why people should start business in Lithuania, Best Strategy To Play Online Baccarat Games, Effects of Incontinence in Various Areas of Life, Conversations from the porch Episode 19 with Jack Heart &, Covert Operations In Vietnam: The Incomplete History of US-Norway Collaboration. 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.. 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. The report further said that Blackwater had reported that its forces fired first in over 80 percent of the cases. Blackwater is an American private military company . The ones who were killed on the street were shot running for their lives. Video of the aftermath includes an image of a human brain on the road in Nisour Square. Before. Dozens of witnesses were brought to the United States to testify about what happened. Dec. 24, 2020 Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani with a photo of his 9-year-old son, Ali, who was killed by Blackwater. They left in 2011 but returned in 2014 after the Islamic State militant group overran large parts of the country. And afterward, Iraqi citizens wanted to ensure that those who had done this were held responsible. He never received treatment. security contractors who had previously been sentenced over the death of 17 Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisur Square massacre . American troops invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. 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. [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". 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. "[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 massacre took place in 2007, when the four were working as guards for Blackwater, a private military contractor, on an assignment in Baghdad. Russian Forces strike Ukrainian Armys Electronic Intelligence Center in Kiev Region. It was funded with millions that. It was an honor to represent these victims and their families. Being so close to the Green Zone, he thought someone important might be entering or leaving the area.
Former Blackwater guards sentenced for massacre of unarmed Iraqi