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. It looks at the rise of private security contractors such as Blackwater in the era of modern warfare. Get updates on human rights issues from around the globe. 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. His brother went to the emergency room, then to the morgue. The Blackwater company itself wasn't charged. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each. [26][27], On September 27, 2007, The New York Times reported that during the chaotic incident at Nisour Square, one member of the Blackwater security team continued to fire on civilians despite urgent cease-fire calls from colleagues. 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.". 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. [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". Some of the Iraqis told me that they don't even care about the money. "I tried to help the young man, but his mother was holding him so tight," said Khalaf. Haythem identified his son from what was left of his shoes. US prosecutors are now reportedly trying to build a case against those involved in the Sept. 16 shootings. The trial against Heard, Liberty, Slatten, and Slough began around June 2014 and lasted over two months. None of the bullets the lab had available could be matched to the rifles used by the guards. "If you perceive marriage as half of your life, Mohasin was my best half," he said. [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 by President Donald Trump in December 2020. With Georgia Chris, Amy Simon, McCayne Blomberg, Jenny Robinson. [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. [10][11] The next day, Blackwater Worldwide's license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked. [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. Between 2004 and 2008, the State Department ended giving Blackwater more than $1 billion in contracts. [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. And despite numerous failures to comply with its security contract, including a failure to maintain the required number of security specialists, the State Department never sought out the $55 million in penalties that Blackwater should've been charged. No! 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. Raven 23's commander Jimmy Watson reportedly made the "tactical decision" to go to Nisour Square and block traffic for an evacuation route. Meanwhile, it took two weeks before a 10-person FBI team was sent to investigate the massacre for the government. 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. Human Rights Watch reports that some helicopters above ever started shooting at the street below. I interviewed Khalaf on Nov. 30, in a small conference room inside a hotel in Istanbul, Turkey. Not only was the decision described as a "miscarriage of justice," but some U.N experts claimed that the pardons "violate U.S. obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level," per Reuters. Khalaf recounted the events of that day to a hushed room of lawyers with laptops. Finally, around 5 p.m., he phoned his brother who worked at the hospital closest to Nissour Square. [50], On October 4, 2007, U.S. military reports indicated Blackwater's guards had opened fire without provocation and used excessive force. None of the Iraqis we interviewed last month could describe their losses without breaking down in tears. [6][86] Bringing the weapons charges was disputed within the Justice Department, which initially opposed including them in the indictment. [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". [45] Also, it is not clear whether the license revocation is permanent. [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. 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. 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. But the State Department representative kept insisting on a number. 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. He spent the next three days in the hospital and underwent major surgery on his right arm, which was fractured by a bullet. [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. [68][69], On September 24, 2007, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior announced it would file criminal charges against the Blackwater staff involved in the shooting, although it is unclear how some of them will be brought to trial. (modern). 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. They beat citizens and scorn them. Human Rights Watch is a 501(C)(3)nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 13-2875808. Blackwater guards were also known for their aggression. Around midday on September 16, 2007, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed and his mother Mohassin were driving to the hospital to pick up Ahmed's father, Haythem, who worked as a pathologist. A few token prosecutions of a handful of Blackwater employees will not be enough. He was shot through the roof of his car as the Blackwater convoy drove past firing down into traffic. The Untold Truth Of The Blackwater Massacre, no evidence to support Blackwater's claims, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. The Blackwater Shooting (2007) | The New York Times The New York Times 4.26M subscribers 1.1M views 8 years ago In this 2007 video, witnesses shed light on the killing of 17 Iraqis by American. 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. 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. (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. [95][96] Heard, Liberty, and Slough were resentenced on September 5, 2019 to terms approximately half the original 30-year periods. Tasks of the PMC are the support and training of military and police operations. [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". The case was consolidated with four other cases against Blackwater and on January 1, 2010, the plaintiffs agreed to a settlement and to withdraw their complaint. "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. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. One of the Blackwater guards reportedly screamed "No! Now they'll go free. 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. [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. A lawsuit filed in 2007 also accused Blackwater of killing five Iraqi civilians without justification just one week before the Nisour Square massacre. Now, left to deal with the aftermath are 16 grieving families, and those, like Hooby, still trying to recover from their wounds. An estimated 20,000 to 35,000 private security contractors operate in Iraq, without adequate oversight, without adequate training and without adequate legal sanctions to hold abusers accountable. However, according to Reuters, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, claiming that "the U.S. government had recklessly violated the defendants' constitutional rights." Sign up for the VE Newsletter https://www.vigilanceelite.com/newsletterErik Prince is an American businessman, former U.S. Navy SEAL officer,and . Share this via WhatsApp courts. Ahmed would count upwards of 40 bullet holes in their car alone. 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. 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. With experience learned from a similar lawsuit filed two years ago against US contractors implicated in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Burke O'Neil is perhaps the only law firm in the nation that could so quickly gather eyewitness and victim accounts, make the right legal arguments and begin the process of holding Blackwater to account. [34], In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Blackwater's rights to conduct work in Iraq were temporarily suspended. In fact, they even renewed the contract in 2008. An American man and Iraqi woman joined forces to document the reality of life on the ground for Iraqi civilians and become the only outsiders to live with the people of Fallujah following the battle that destroyed their holy city. At least four other Iraqis have been reported killed in that incident on Sept. 9. Another young man, 27-year-old Abu Hassam, suddenly became the head of his family just a week earlier, when on Sept. 9 his older brother was shot in front of the family's carpet shop -- in an incident also attributed to Blackwater. [55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. The Blackwater team also claimed that some of the "aggressors" were dressed like Iraqi Police as well as civilians. 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. (L-r) Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten. In 2002, Blackwater received its first contract from the United States government. They were also contracted for personal protective services in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Israel, and Palestine. He thought the helicopters would start spraying those who were hiding behind the hill for safety from the street-level threat. A burnt car at the site where Blackwater guards opened fire on a crowd in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2007. [77] "Prosecutors should therefore have built their case against the men without them", a BBC report explained. [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. The team is suing Blackwater on behalf of the victims of the Sept. 16 shooting. "[21] Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal. Salman ran over to the car and as he raised his hand to stop the shooting, the Blackwater guards responded by shooting Mohassin dead as she clung to her son, reports NPR. [54] He served one tour in Iraq before being hired as a Personal Security Specialist in Iraq. Adrienne Ballenger . [83], In September 2013, the charges against Ball were dropped. Amid the wreckage, colorful clouds billowed into the air from the convoy's parting gift -- multicolored smoke bombs. [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. [37] A senior aide to al-Maliki said that three of the Blackwater guards were Iraqis and could be subject to prosecution. [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. Ghasson Mahmood was a 55-year-old civil engineer. Raven 23 "returned defensive fire" and withdrew from Nisour Square with one of its BearCat vehicles in tow. He documented what was left of his brother's car. Even General David Petraeus and former ambassador Ryan Crocker, top officials in charge of Iraq policy at the time of the massacre, issued a joint statement called the pardons "hugely damaging, an action that tells the world that Americans abroad can commit the most heinous crimes with impunity.". Instead, it appears as though the massacre was started by a single bullet fired by Nicholas Slatten, a Blackwater guard. 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. "Convoys are common," explained Khalaf. He watched as all four cars drove away as the 15-minute shooting spree ended, and huddled in fear as the helicopters began firing. Essentially, Prince wanted a "free-market version" of military training. 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. 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. Blackwater Security Consulting, also known as Blackwater Worldwide, was founded in 1997 by Al Clark and Erik Prince as a private security firm. "I kept calling, but thought there must be some sort of cellphone interruption.". The screenplay was originally written by Stuart Beattie, with Roskam penning the most recent draft. [6][85][86] Jurors sided with prosecutors' contention that the shooting was a criminal act, not a battlefield encounter gone wrong. As of 2021, their name is Academi after being taken over by an "unnamed group of private investors.". [19] A Blackwater spokeswoman responded to the findings by saying Blackwater "supports the stringent accountability of the industry. 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. For a moment, it appeared as though Blackwater was going to be responsible for guarding the FBI agents, but the Bureau soon announced that the FBI agents would instead be guarded by "official personnel," rather than the very company that they were to be investigating. Meanwhile, although Moonen admitted that he was intoxicated, he maintained that he shot in self-defense. [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. The massacre took place in 2007, when the four were working as guards for Blackwater, a private military contractor, on an assignment in Baghdad. 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. As shootings in the square were not uncommon, it is unclear whether the shells were from the shooting in question or from other incidents. The BBC reports that during Slatten's second trial in 2018, a mistrial was declared after the jury deliberated for 16 days. 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. An Iraqi man who survived an infamous massacre of unarmed civilians by American security guards in Baghdad has condemned President Donald Trump's decision to pardon the men as "unjust . 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. [36], On September 19, as a result of the incident, the United States temporarily suspended all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. Around this time, another Blackwater team of 15 guards known as Raven 23 headed out of the International Zone to offer support, despite the fact that, according to United States v. Slough, they were given an order "not to leave the Green Zone [also known as International Zone]." 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. One such incident is the Blackwater massacre, also known as the Nisour Square massacre. (An unrelated bombing in a nearby market cut the shopping trip short.) No!" Legislation now working its way through Congress would resolve some of the gaps in the law, and hold all US private security contractors subject to criminal sanctions for felonies committed abroad. [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. Trump pardons ex-campaign aide and disgraced Republican lawmakers, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. [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. 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.