Four guards fired on an unarmed crowd in Baghdad in 2007, killing 14 people and causing outrage over the use of private security in war zones. President Donald Trump pardoned four Blackwater security guards who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for killing 14 civilians in Baghdad in 2007, a massacre that sparked international outrage over the use of secretive contractors in war zones. The four – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, and Nicholas Slatten – were part of an armored convoy that opened fire without discrimination with machine guns and grenade launchers on a troop of defenseless people in the Iraqi capital. Known as the Nisour Square massacre, the massacre was seen as a low point in the Iraq conflict.
In 2014, Slough, Liberty, and Heard were charged with 13 counts of attempted murder and 17 counts of attempted murder, and Slatten, the first team to be released, was arrested. fire, convicted on the first charge of murder. Slatten was sentenced to life; Slough, Liberty, and Heard earn 30 years each. Pre-trial pardon support, Blackwater contractors, and embarrassed legislators. The start of the charges was dropped by a federal judge – causing a riot in Iraq – but then vice-president Joe Biden promised to pursue a new charge, which was confirmed by judges.
Last year November, he acquitted a former U.S. Army commander who was about to go to court for the murder of a bomb suspect in Afghanistan and a former Army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to kill three Afghans. Supporters of former Blackwater Worldwide contractors were lobbying for forgiveness, arguing that the men had been punished too much. Prosecutors allege that the Blackwater Crow 23 convoy with strong weapons carried out an unprepared attack using sniper fire, machine guns, and grenade launchers. Defense lawyers said their clients returned fire after Iraqi terrorists were abducted
The U.S. government said in a memorandum filed after the verdict was handed down: “None of the victims were insurgents and posed any threat to the Raven 23 convoy.” The letter also contained quotes from relatives of the victims, including Mohammed Kinani, whose nine-year-old son Ali was killed. “This day changed my life forever. That day destroyed me, “Kinani said. The memorandum also cites David Boslego, a retired U.S. military colonel, who said the massacre was “extremely excessive use of force” and “completely unsuitable for an organization whose sole task was to provide personal protection to anyone in an armored vehicle.”
Boslego also said that the attack “adversely affected our mission, [its] negative impact… It further strained our relationship with the Iraqis.” FBI investigators who visited the scene the next day said that “The Assassination of I Lai in Iraq” – a reference to the civilian murder of American soldiers during the Vietnam War – in which only one soldier was charged. After the allegations, Blackwater said – renamed the Academy after it was sold and renamed in 2011 – that it was “a relief with the court ‘s decision to complete its investigation into a disaster in Nisour Square.” in 2007 and was reported any crime by our courts.
14 victims killed by Blackwater guards are listed as Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’i, Mahassin Mohssen Kadhum Al-Khazali, Osama Fadhil Abbas, Kasim Mohamed Abbas Mahmud, Ali Mohammed Hafedh Abdul Razzak, Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, MushtakKarimAbd Al-Razzak, Ghaniiah Hassan Ali, Ibrahim AbidAiash, Hamoud Sa’eed Abttan, Sa’adi Ali Abbas Alkarkh, Udai Ismail Ibrahiem, Mahdi Sahib Nasir and Ali Khalil Abdul Hussein.
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