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. Khalaf's observations are backed up by official accounts, including leaked FBI findings, which concluded that at least 14 of the 17 shooting deaths were unjustified, and statements by military. He waited and waited, and eventually went home without them. Ghasson Mahmood was a 55-year-old civil engineer. Supporters of the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide had lobbied for the pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished. [97], On December 22, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump granted full presidential pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard. "I tried to be patient," he said. In the span of 20 minutes, 17 Iraqi people were killed and another 24 were left wounded. - Asser Institute (Decision Date: 31 December 2009)", "Ex-Blackwater Guards Face Renewed Charges", "Blackwater guards face new U.S. charges for Iraq shooting deaths", "Legal questions loom in Blackwater convictions", "Blackwater guards found guilty in Iraq shootings", "Emails Reveal Discord Over Blackwater Charges", "Ex-Blackwater Guards Sentenced to Long Prison Terms in 2007 Killings of Iraqi Civilians", "U.S. Appeals Court Tosses Ex-Blackwater Guard's Conviction in 2007 Baghdad Massacre", "Murder conviction in Blackwater case thrown out, other sentences overturned", "In Blackwater Case, Court Rejects a Murder Conviction and Voids 3 Sentences", Recent Case: D.C. US: Close Legal Loopholes Allowing Contractors to Act with Impunity, Letter to US Rep. David Price (D-NC) in Support of Accountability for US Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine: Izium Apartment Victims Need Justice, Indian Girls Alleged Rape and Murder Sparks Protests, Joint Statement: UAE Human Rights Record Ahead of COP28, Video: Violence and Rape by Zimbabwe Gov't Forces After Protests. Essentially, Prince wanted a "free-market version" of military training. 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. Human Rights Watch reports that some helicopters above ever started shooting at the street below. courts. Assadi is now the sole breadwinner for the entire family. He suffered from his wounds for over a year . After the convictions, Blackwater which changed its name to Xe and then Academi after being sold said it was relieved that the justice system has completed its investigation into a tragedy that occurred at Nisour Square in 2007 and that any wrongdoing that was carried out has been addressed by our courts. Director Pasha Patriki Writers Chad Law Tyler W. Konney Richard Switzer Stars Jean-Claude Van Damme Dolph Lundgren Al Sapienza See production, box office & company info Watch on Freevee Watch Free on Freevee More watch options None of the Iraqis we interviewed last month could describe their losses without breaking down in tears. Tasks of the PMC are the support and training of military and police operations. 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. The team is suing Blackwater on behalf of the victims of the Sept. 16 shooting. [15] The incident sparked at least five investigations, including one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With the contract to provide security for L. Paul Bremer, Blackwater essentially "cement[ed] its presence at the center of conflict in Iraq," per PBS. 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. They just want to see those responsible punished.
Black Water (2018) - IMDb [14], On October 2, 2007, the Democratic staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report stating that Blackwater USA guards had used deadly force weekly in Iraq and had inflicted "significant casualties and property damage". [88], On August 4, 2017, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned Slatten's murder conviction and ordered the other defendants to be re-sentenced to time already served.
His brother's wife had delivered their first child, a daughter, just 20 days earlier. Then the mother was shot dead before his eyes. As a result, on October 17, 2013, the Department of Justice once more filed charges against the Blackwater security guards, according to the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. 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. 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. [19] According to this account, the security team fired warning shots and then lethal fire at the Kia. In the wake of the massacre in 2007, the Iraqi government banned Blackwater from working in the country and cancelled their license. They arrived at the square while driving on the wrong side of the road. This is the untold truth of the Blackwater massacre. And after the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Blackwater won a $25 million contract to provide security for L. Paul Bremer, an American diplomat who led the transitional government following the invasion. Assadi, 31, a stoic, unsmiling man, became the head of the family after his older brother Usama was killed in the shootings. After roughly 20 minutes of shooting, the Blackwater guards convoy drove out of the square, leaving multicolored smoke bombs in their wake. 3", is named Paul Slough. Khalaf turned back toward the Yarmouk road to see what might have spurred the shooting and heard a woman yell, "My son! Despite the reports and investigations that determined that the use of force was unjustified, the Blackwater guards maintain that they'd "never take an innocent life.
Explained: Why Trump's pardon to Blackwater contractors is One such incident is the Blackwater massacre, also known as the Nisour Square massacre. [54] He served one tour in Iraq before being hired as a Personal Security Specialist in Iraq. [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. The Intercept reports that others who tried to run for cover were killed by machine gunfire. 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. He spent the next two months at home, recuperating. However, as The New York Times reports, "not one witness heard or saw any gunfire coming from Iraqis around the square." Amid the wreckage, colorful clouds billowed into the air from the convoy's parting gift -- multicolored smoke bombs. 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 massacre that sparked an international outcry over the use of mercenaries in war. This evidentiary use of tainted information constitutes yet another Kastigar violation. [43], The Private Security Company Association of Iraq, in a document last updated on July 3, 2007, listed Blackwater as not having a license to operate in Iraq despite their attempts to apply for one. Ex-Blackwater contractor sentenced to life in Iraq shootings By ASHRAF KHALIL August 14, 2019 WASHINGTON (AP) A former Blackwater security contractor was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for his role in the 2007 shooting of unarmed civilians in Iraq that left 14 people dead. [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. In 2002, Blackwater received its first contract from the United States government. "[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. [49], An Interior Ministry spokesman said Iraqi authorities had completed their investigation into the shooting and concluded that Blackwater guards were responsible for the deaths. The trial against Heard, Liberty, Slatten, and Slough began around June 2014 and lasted over two months. [82][20] On June 5, 2012, the US Supreme Court declined to review the Appeal Court ruling, allowing the trial to proceed. A few token prosecutions of a handful of Blackwater employees will not be enough. 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! The FBI also concluded that there was no evidence to support Blackwater's claims that they'd been fired upon by Iraqi civilians. For several years, a private security firm known as Blackwater Security Consulting received an unprecedented level of funding and incredibly limited oversight from the United States. He described how he crouched by the car, his right arm reaching inside, his head out and left arm up in the air, signaling to the convoy, his gun secure in its holster. An error occurred while subscribing your email address. Haythem identified his son from what was left of his shoes. [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. 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. 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. The 2007 incident in Baghdad's Nisoor Square caused an international outcry. 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. Please give now to support our work, New testimony from witnesses and victims provides the most in-depth, harrowing account to date of the US security firm's deadly rampage in Iraq, Share this via Facebook 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", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nisour_Square_massacre&oldid=1151889827, This page was last edited on 26 April 2023, at 21:36. [6][86] Bringing the weapons charges was disputed within the Justice Department, which initially opposed including them in the indictment. "I raised my left arm high in the air to try to signal to the convoy to stop the shooting," he said, thinking that it would respond to such a gesture by a police officer. Ali Khalaf Salman, a traffic cop who was there, recounted seeing an American shoot Ahmed. Two days after the meeting with Carroll, Richter and Thomas were told by an embassy official to "leave Iraq immediately.". Fareed Walid Hassan remembers that "the shooting started like rain." ", Ahmed "was my first baby boy," he said. I took Mr. Carroll's threat seriously. [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". The car rolled forward a short way, hit a wall and stopped, said Hooby. 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. [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. and thus prosecution by U.S. But this convoy made an unexpected U-turn, drove the wrong way around the one-way square, stopped in the middle of it and started shooting. He also maintained that he wanted to limit and reduce the authority of all security contractors, not just Blackwater, Timereports. [8][98] A White House statement said the men had a "long history of service to the nation" as veterans of the US Armed Forces, and that there was strong support for the pardons from the public and elected officials. Four young women tourists are hunted by ruthless woodsmen in the Florida Everglades. Recent episodes in U.S. 1:08 'Look at That Thing': Footage Shows. Although Blackwater denies using helicopters, "at least one [of] the car roofs had bullets through them.". While they weren't the only private contractor to provide military security, the name Blackwater would soon be so notorious that the company would change their name. We responded to a threat accordingly." Raven 23's commander Jimmy Watson reportedly made the "tactical decision" to go to Nisour Square and block traffic for an evacuation route. [77] "Prosecutors should therefore have built their case against the men without them", a BBC report explained. However, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged the United States to end their contract with Blackwater. There was also an incident on December 24, 2006, when Andrew Moonen, a Blackwater guard, murdered Raheem Khalaf Saadoon, a security guard for Adel Abdul Mahdi, the Iraqi vice president. [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. That day changed my life forever. When he got out of his car to find out what was happening, he saw the convoy and the white car burning, and started yelling at the other cars to turn around. Blackwater mercenaries committed a massacre. [93], On December 19, 2018, Slatten was found guilty of murder[94] and again was sentenced to life in prison on August 14, 2019. [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]. (L-r) Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten. [41], Richard J. Griffin, the Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, who made key decisions regarding the department's oversight of private security contractor Blackwater USA, resigned in November 2007, after a critical review by the House Oversight Committee found that his office had failed to adequately supervise private contractors during the Blackwater Baghdad shootings.
The Untold Truth Of The Blackwater Massacre - Grunge He ran three cars back to a white sedan to find a woman holding a young man slumped over and covered with blood. In some instances, like in 2004 when Blackwater members were hired to locate and assassinate top Al-Qaeda operatives, they failed to capture or kill anyone. His brother left behind a wife and four children. It's all the news that's fit to watch. 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. 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/1u1cNzySubscribe to the Times Video newsletter for free and get a handpicked selection of the best videos from The New York Times every week: http://bit.ly/timesvideonewsletterSubscribe on YouTube: http://bit.ly/U8Ys7nWatch more videos at: http://nytimes.com/video---------------------------------------------------------------Want more from The New York Times?Twitter: https://twitter.com/nytvideoFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/nytimes Google+: https://plus.google.com/+nytimes/Whether it's reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, New York Times video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world. [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". [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] courts. Share this via Telegram 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. [10][11] The next day, Blackwater Worldwide's license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked. Other ways to share [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. 23 December 2020. Action Drama Thriller A deep-cover operative awakens to find himself imprisoned in a CIA black site on a submarine. [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.
The Blackwater Shooting - The New York Times In one of the most in-depth collection of testimonials to date regarding Blackwater, Khalaf was among five witnesses and victims flown from Baghdad to meet with Susan Burke, William O'Neil and their team of lawyers and investigators. [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 shooting then turned heavier, Khalaf said, his eyes red-brimmed and serious. It looks at the rise of private security contractors such as Blackwater in the era of modern warfare. A lawsuit filed in 2007 also accused Blackwater of killing five Iraqi civilians without justification just one week before the Nisour Square massacre. Also quoted in the memorandum was David Boslego, a retired US army colonel, who said the massacre was a grossly excessive use of force and grossly inappropriate for an entity whose only job was to provide personal protection to somebody in an armoured vehicle. Of the 17 that lost their lives, two were children under the age of 12, with the youngest aged 9 years old.
Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre - Wikipedia [48] According to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised a "fair and transparent" investigation into the incident. Circuit ordered for a new trial to be held, stating that Slatten should've had a separate trial. [50], On October 4, 2007, U.S. military reports indicated Blackwater's guards had opened fire without provocation and used excessive force. On September 16, 2007, a car bomb went off in Baghdad, Iraq, near the Izdihar Compound, where a U.S. diplomat was meeting with Iraqi officials, at approximately 11:53 AM.
What's Blackwater massacre? Donald Trump pardons guards behind - MEAWW [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". Ahmed would count upwards of 40 bullet holes in their car alone. Blackwater guards were also known for driving on the wrong side of the road and crashing into civilian cars. The incident was allegedly resolved only after another Blackwater contractor pointed his weapon at the man still firing and ordered him to stop. Adrienne Ballenger .
Ultimately, Blackwater repeatedly insisted that their guards "were fired upon and responded appropriately."