I interviewed Khalaf on Nov. 30, in a small conference room inside a hotel in Istanbul, Turkey. (These remarks were never actually delivered; the Department of Justice launched an investigation the day before the hearing and asked the committee not to discuss the details of the Sept. 16 incident. Blackwater was even hired by the Department of Homeland Security during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and according to PBS, collected "more than $70 million in hurricane-related contracts. The team is suing Blackwater on behalf of the victims of the Sept. 16 shooting. [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. The UN has sharply criticised President Donald Trump's decision to pardon four former Blackwater . The Iraq government's own investigation found no evidence that the guards had been provoked or attacked, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's spokesperson called the shootings "deliberate murder.". He was shot through the roof of his car as the Blackwater convoy drove past firing down into traffic. The Nisour Square massacreoccurred on September 16, 2007, when employees of BlackwaterSecurity Consulting (now Constellis), a private military companycontracted 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. The State Department announced an American-Iraqi joint commission to investigate both the shooting and the broader issue of employing private security contractors. An order issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority in its departing days and still in force gives foreign private contractors immunity under Iraqi law. Please try again. Dec. 24, 2020 Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani with a photo of his 9-year-old son, Ali, who was killed by Blackwater. [28] Nicholas Slatten was found guilty of first-degree murder, and Slough, Liberty and Heard were found guilty of voluntary and attempted manslaughter charges, and of using a machine gun to commit a violent crime. They arrived at the square while driving on the wrong side of the road. (Iraqi police) or any of the local security forces fired back at them", the official continued. At stake is the future of other innocent lives, as well as America's reputation throughout the Middle East and across the world. Fifteen minutes later, 17 Iraqi civilians were dead, dozens more wounded, and a white sedan that had been engulfed in flames contained two bodies charred beyond recognition. The report found that the guards fired their weapons 195 times from the beginning of 2005 through the second week of September 2005. [77] "Prosecutors should therefore have built their case against the men without them", a BBC report explained. 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. [48] According to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised a "fair and transparent" investigation into the incident. No!" The order did not say when the suspension would expire. [19] The three justifiable killings were those of the two passengers in the white Kia sedan and an unidentified Iraqi nearby. The State Department has offered family members $10,000 for those killed in the Sept. 16 shootings -- an amount most consider insultingly low and have refused. In October, the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released its analysis of Blackwater's own internal reporting since 2005, which found 195 shooting incidents in the last two years, including 160 in which Blackwater employees fired the first shot. A rocket grenade was fired into one of the cars, killing its driver. [56], On April 1, 2011, the Associated Press reported on Erik Prince's seven-hour testimony about what allegedly transpired. According to Tidings Media, one guard continued to shoot at unarmed civilians until another guard drew his own gun on him and threatened to shoot. At the end of the day, none of the Blackwater guards deny what they did, they just deny that there was any wrongdoing. In the end, after seven weeks of deliberations, Slough, Heard, and Liberty were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and Slatten was found guilty of murder, since he was responsible for the first death in Nisour Square, Reuters reports. The trial against Heard, Liberty, Slatten, and Slough began around June 2014 and lasted over two months. [58] Nor is the US a signatory of the 1977 additional protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions in which Article 47 specifies that mercenaries are civilians who "take a direct part in the hostilities" and are "motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain". This is the untold truth of the Blackwater massacre. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they responded. Share this via Reddit But according to ICD, some of the plaintiffs claimed that they were "forced to accept the settlement.". "Please, we want to live in peace, surrounded by friends not killers. 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. [55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. However, according to The New York Times, the Iraqi government technically didn't have the legal authority to do so since the U.S.-led transitional government shielded security contractors from Iraqi laws, per CNN. The logs depicted "a hectic eight minutes in which the guards repeatedly reported incoming gunfire from insurgents and Iraqi police". 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." [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". According to The New York Times, after the initial gunfire on the first car, the Blackwater guards "unleashed an overwhelming barrage of gunfire" onto Iraqi people who were trying to flee. Share this via Email In remarks prepared for delivery before a congressional hearing in October, Blackwater chairman Erik Prince claimed company guards "returned fire at threatening targets," including "men with AK-47s firing on the convoy" and "approaching vehicles that appeared to be suicide car bombers." 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. 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. Meanwhile, although Moonen admitted that he was intoxicated, he maintained that he shot in self-defense. 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. [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. [80], On April 22, 2011, after closed-door testimony, a federal appeals-court panel revived the Justice Department's prosecution of the former Blackwater Worldwide guards by reinstating the manslaughter charges against the five men. and thus prosecution by U.S. [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. Blackwater Security Consulting, also known as Blackwater Worldwide, was founded in 1997 by Al Clark and Erik Prince as a private security firm. [41] Senate Democratic leaders said they planned to pass similar legislation as soon as possible. [54] He enlisted in 1999, and served in Bosnia with the 3rd Infantry Division. And Blackwater didn't make the investigation easy. The private military company branched structure consisting of more than a dozen offices reporting the managing organization Xe Services. Blackwater's contracts for protecting American diplomats also weren't limited to Iraq. 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. He also maintained that he wanted to limit and reduce the authority of all security contractors, not just Blackwater, Timereports. Blackwater despite numerous scandals, congressional investigations, FBI probes and documented killings of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan remained a central part of the Obama. [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. 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. ", Failure to Uncover the Fate of Syrias Missing, Human Rights Watch defends the rights of people in close to 100 countries worldwide, spotlighting abuses and bringing perpetrators to justice. [24] The driver of the Kia was shot once in the head by a Blackwater contractor and was killed. With Georgia Chris, Amy Simon, McCayne Blomberg, Jenny Robinson. "Convoys are common," explained Khalaf. 23 December 2020. The White House further stated that the Court of Appeals "ruled that additional evidence should have been presented at Mr Slatten's trial", and recently that prosecutors said "that the lead Iraqi investigator, who prosecutors relied heavily on to verify that there were no insurgent victims and to collect evidence, may have had ties to insurgent groups himself". But the accounts of Khalaf and others contradict each of Prince's assertions. The man was Ahmed, a 20-year-old medical student at the top of his class, and the woman his mother, Mohasin, a successful dermatologist and mother of three. Blackwater Mercenaries Filmed on a Rampage in Iraq & Shooting Civilians from WarPosting After being leaked by a former employee of the notorious PMC, the footage dated April 2006 was featured in a piece called "The Warrior Class" by Charles Glass. [47], The U.S. State Department said it planned to investigate what it called a "terrible incident". The Blackwater guards appeared to have fired grenade launchers in addition to machine guns, according to the report. The Blackwater guards also shot at cars, taxis, and buses. [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. No! Employees of Blackwater (now called Academi), which was contracted by the US government to provide security services in Iraq, shot at unarmed Iraqi civilians while escorting a US embassy convoy, killing 17 and leaving 20 injured. 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 officials disputing Blackwater's claim that its guards had been fired upon or under any sort of attack. In August 2019, Slatten was once more sentenced to life in prison without parole, Al Jazeera reports. "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 . In total, the defendants faced 14 counts of voluntary manslaughter and 20 counts of attempted manslaughter. 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. Along with a few hundred others, he stayed there as the chaos unfolded, watching as the helicopters circling above the street started shooting at those below. In the span of 20 minutes, 17 Iraqi people were killed and another 24 were left wounded. In other cases, investigations don't even get off the ground, because of lack of political will, limits in the extraterritorial reach of US criminal laws, and the absence of investigative units on the ground. [1][2][3] The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States. 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. ", According to the memo Richter wrote to State Department officials in Washington after the incident, "Mr. Carroll's statement was made in a low, even tone of voice, his head was slightly lowered; his eyes were fixed on mine. "Everyone loved him. The Intercept reports that others who tried to run for cover were killed by machine gunfire. The Blackwater company itself wasn't charged. [83], In September 2013, the charges against Ball were dropped. At first, this seemed completely normal for the totally abnormal world of Baghdad in September 2007. 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." (modern). His brother left behind a wife and four children. He spent the next two months at home, recuperating. 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! A few token prosecutions of a handful of Blackwater employees will not be enough. Khalaf recounted the events of that day to a hushed room of lawyers with laptops. [63], A U.S. judge's decision to dismiss all charges against Blackwater on January 1, 2010, sparked outrage in the Arab world. There needs to be a wholesale reform of the way security contractors and those that oversee their work do business. Assadi is now the sole breadwinner for the entire family. [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 large metal rod implanted by the surgeon to help his broken bone heal properly is expected to be removed at the end of December. An error occurred while subscribing your email address. His brother's wife had delivered their first child, a daughter, just 20 days earlier. [12] The U.S. State Department has said that "innocent life was lost",[13] and according to The Washington Post, a military report appeared to corroborate "the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault". )[60], Baghdad resident Halim Mashkoor told AP Television News, "We see the security firms doing whatever they want in the streets. He waited and waited, and eventually went home without them. The BBC reports that during Slatten's second trial in 2018, a mistrial was declared after the jury deliberated for 16 days. [45] Also, it is not clear whether the license revocation is permanent. [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. [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 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. Prince's remarks were subsequently reported in the Washington Post.). Ahmed Haythem and his mother, Mohasin, were both killed in the Blackwater shootings in Baghdad on September 16, 2007. courts. Prince's prepared testimony also asserted that one of the vehicles had been disabled by the "enemy fire" and had to be towed. Ali Khalaf Salman, a traffic cop who was there, recounted seeing an American shoot Ahmed. [32] In response to the guards' killing of the Iraqi policeman, other Iraqi police officers began to fire at the Blackwater men, who communicated to the State Department operations center that they were under attack. He ran three cars back to a white sedan to find a woman holding a young man slumped over and covered with blood. One such incident is the Blackwater massacre, also known as the Nisour Square massacre. 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. NOW ON DVD www.noendinsightmovie.com The first film of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality . [10][11] The next day, Blackwater Worldwide's license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked. [19] According to this account, the security team fired warning shots and then lethal fire at the Kia. 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. ", Ahmed "was my first baby boy," he said. stunt double: Jasmine Waltz Kelly Bellini . 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. 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. In 2002, Blackwater received its first contract from the United States government. Haythem, the composed, articulate and powerfully calm father and husband of Ahmed and Mohasin, who died in the white car, expected them to pick him up at the health center where he worked that afternoon. [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. [92] However, the court then found that the mandatory minimum sentences as applied to the defendants were unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishments, over the partial dissent of Judge Judith W. His forehead and brains were missing and his skin completely burned. Share this via Printer. 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. [37], Blackwater, which had been operating in Iraq without an Iraqi government license, applied for one after the incident, but the application was rejected by Iraqi officials in January 2009. 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. Stuck in heavy traffic on the opposite side of the square from Yarmouk road, he heard the shooting start. Of the 17 that lost their lives, two were children under the age of 12, with the youngest aged 9 years old. Fareed Walid Hassan remembers that "the shooting started like rain." The 2004 Fallujah Blackwater incident occurred on March 31, 2004, when Iraqi insurgents attacked a convoy containing four American contractors from the private military company Blackwater USA who were conducting a delivery for food caterers ESS. When Slatten was tried for a third time, the jury deliberated for five days before finding him guilty of first-degree murder in December 2018. The deceased included nine and 11-year-old boys. The report found that the use of contractors such as Blackwater was a "new form of mercenary activity" and illegal under international law; however, the United States is not a signatory of the 1989 UN Mercenary Convention banning the use of mercenaries. The massacre took place in 2007, when the four were working as guards for Blackwater, a private military contractor, on an assignment in Baghdad. [14], On October 13, 2007, the FBI reported that it had concluded that at least 14 of the 17 Iraqis who died in the square had been killed without cause. Sign up for the VE Newsletter https://www.vigilanceelite.com/newsletterErik Prince is an American businessman, former U.S. Navy SEAL officer,and . Adrienne Ballenger . Haythem Ahmed was barely able to identify his son and his wife when he got to the scene, since their car had been completely burned. And Blackwater is not the only problem. The story follows Prince, a Navy SEAL turned billionaire, as he is dogged by a grand-jury. 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. He watched as all four cars drove away as the 15-minute shooting spree ended, and huddled in fear as the helicopters began firing. One of the men I met in Istanbul wrote me after I returned home. But the Iraqis' hands are tied. The New York Times reports that when Richter confronted Daniel Carroll, Blackwater's Iraq project manager, about this on August 21, 2007, Carroll became incredibly aggressive and told Richter "that he [Carroll] could kill me [Richter] at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq. Some of the counts resulted in a mistrial, but none of the defendants got an acquittal on any count. [93], On December 19, 2018, Slatten was found guilty of murder[94] and again was sentenced to life in prison on August 14, 2019. "I said their lives are priceless," said Haythem. Ghasson Mahmood was a 55-year-old civil engineer. Inspired by the true story of a crocodile attack in Australia's Northern Territory in December 2003, a . [54] He received an honorable discharge in 2002 and then enlisted in the Texas National Guard. 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. The numerals and letters matched the family's plate. However, according to Reuters, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, claiming that "the U.S. government had recklessly violated the defendants' constitutional rights." It remains unclear whether the team member mistook the civilians for insurgents. [82][20] On June 5, 2012, the US Supreme Court declined to review the Appeal Court ruling, allowing the trial to proceed. Finally, around 5 p.m., he phoned his brother who worked at the hospital closest to Nissour Square. In 2008, the United States Department of Justice filed criminal charges against Donald Ball, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten (pictured, center), and Paul Slough, all of whom were Blackwater guards during the Nisour Square massacre. But this was likely due to the fact that the U.S.Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, which took effect in 2009, ended contractor immunity. We are taking fire from insurgents and Iraqi police. 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. Robert Young Pelton, a journalist who spent a month with Blackwater in Iraq, said that the guards "use[d] their machine guns like car horns," per Tidings Media. Their first contract, awarded in June 2004, was for $100 million for one year. Prosecutors argued the men did not face hostile gunfire when they began shooting, and continued to shoot despite the lack of threats. On January 31, 2009, the U.S. State Department notified Blackwater that it would not be renewing its security contract with the company. Then the mother was shot dead before his eyes. Assadi, 31, a stoic, unsmiling man, became the head of the family after his older brother Usama was killed in the shootings. [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.
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