[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. Within 20 minutes, 17 civilians had been fatally shot, including two boys who were only nine and eleven years old, and 20 more had been wounded. There were 1,000 Blackwater security guards in Iraq on the day of the massacre. [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. [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. Describing the video dated April 2006 that shows a woman being hit by a Blackwater vehicle, Glass writes: "A woman in a black full-length burka began to cross the street. 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. Furthermore, after the shooting at Nisour Square had stopped, a Blackwater convoy (which could have been Raven 23) opened fire on civilians in traffic at another intersection just a few hundred yards away. Monday, April 13, four Blackwater contract killers were sentenced to long prison terms for the 2007 massacre of 17 unarmed civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad during the height of the Iraq war. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they responded. Responsible for firing the first bullet in the Nisour Square massacre in 2007, former Blackwater security contractor Nicholas Slatten was sentenced Wednesday to life in federal prison. Circuit ordered for a new trial to be held, stating that Slatten should've had a separate trial. In the aftermath, 17 Iraqi civilians were dead and twenty injured. 10:45. 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. Members of Blackwater are petitioning the Supreme Court in an effort to find the justice that has eluded them. 132. [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]. 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. "The jury got it exactly right, this was murder," US Judge Royce Lamberth said while pronouncing the life sentence in Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the Blackwater guards continue to maintain that they "didn't shoot at anybody that wasn't shooting at me," as Liberty stated in an interview with the Associated Press. Slatten was found guilty of one count of first-degree murder, which carried a mandatory life sentence. This contract ended up being extended into 2006 and the total cost of that single contract came out to over $300 million. In the span of 20 minutes, 17 Iraqi people were killed and another 24 were left wounded. The Intercept reports that others who tried to run for cover were killed by machine gunfire. Blackwater guards were also known for their aggression. This is a mashup from the men of Raven 23 (SRS EP . RT. 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. Subscribe 947. [1][2][3] The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States. What Really Happened in the 2008 Georgian War and Why it Matters The driver, who was shot in the head, lost control of the car, so the car continued to roll forward towards the convoy, which is when other Blackwater guards also opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers. )[60], Baghdad resident Halim Mashkoor told AP Television News, "We see the security firms doing whatever they want in the streets. The Blackwater Massacre and What Really Happened in Nisour Square. When the guards got to the intersection at Nisour Square where the massacre took place, some of them got out of the trucks to stop traffic so the convoy could get through. 0. . USP Coleman I was opened in 2001, and in 2004 Clark Construction completed a 555,000-square-foot (51,600 m 2) additional component for USP Coleman II. [15] The incident sparked at least five investigations, including one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Iraqi government, citing eyewitness reports, concluded that the Blackwater guards fired on . The State Department announced an American-Iraqi joint commission to investigate both the shooting and the broader issue of employing private security contractors. 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.". In 2015, Slatten was sentenced to life in prison while Slough, Heard, and Liberty were sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. 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. 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. This is calculated by multiplying the width by the height. In August 2019, Slatten was once more sentenced to life in prison without parole, Al Jazeera reports. Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor's operations in Iraq. And none of the I.P. [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. courts. 1 acre = 43,560 square foot 1 square yard = 9 square foot 1 square meter = 10.76 square foot 1 square inch = 0.00064516 square foot Calculating Cost Per Square Foot. According to Courthouse News Service, they also stated that Slough, Heard, and Liberty should also be re-sentenced "because their 30-year prison terms were too long" and constituted "cruel and unusual punishment.". In December of 2020, President Donald Trump pardoned the four Blackwater guards in a similar fashion to President Richard Nixons pardoning of Lieutenant Calley, the man who ordered his soldiers to slaughter unarmed Vietnamese civilians in what is known as the My Lai massacre as well as participating in it himself. Most reports, however, state that Blackwater guards opened fire when one car didnt stop at the intersection. TwoFeather - 268 Views. [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. FCC Coleman is located in central Florida, . [3][84] Prosecutors stated they reached their decision after an "assessment of the admissible evidence against him". It earned so much notoriety that Blackwater was forced to rebrand itself as 'Academi'. Although 17 people were killed, the FBI only charged the Blackwater guards in 14 of the deaths for violating rules regarding the use of deadly force. TwoFeather - 308 Views. 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", Use of white phosphorus by the United States, United States and the International Criminal Court, A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, "The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time", AfghanIraqi Freedom Memorial (Salem, Oregon), The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nisour_Square_massacre&oldid=1141803510, Violent non-state actor incidents in Asia, People convicted of murder by the United States federal government, Pages using embedded infobox templates with the title parameter, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 26 February 2023, at 22:05. Circuit Holds It Cruel and Unusual to Impose Mandatory Thirty-Year Sentence on Military Contractors for Gun Charge, "Former Blackwater contractor found guilty of murder in Iraq massacre", "Former Blackwater Guard Sentenced to Life for 2007 Baghdad Traffic-Circle Shooting", "Former Blackwater security contractor sentenced to life in Iraq shootings; In all, 10 men, two women and two boys, ages 9 and 11, were killed", "Blackwater Contractors Resentenced in 2007 Attack on Baghdad Civilians", "Survivors of Blackwater massacre in Iraq slam Trump's pardons for US guards behind killing", "Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Executive Grants of Clemency", "Relative of Blackwater victim in Iraq says pardons 'unfair', "UN criticises Trump's pardons for Blackwater guards jailed over Iraq killings", "I Sued Blackwater for the Massacre of Iraqi Civilians. The trial against four Blackwater guards involved in the shooting Nicholas Slatten, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, and Paul Slough did not begin until June 17, 2014, because of previous issues the FBI had regarding evidence. [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. 0 rating. On September 16, 2007, employees of the Blackwater Security Consulting private security firm opened fire on unarmed Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad while directing traffic. In total, the defendants faced 14 counts of voluntary manslaughter and 20 counts of attempted manslaughter. ", 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. 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. The Untold Truth Of The Blackwater Massacre, no evidence to support Blackwater's claims, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. After the September 11th attacks, Blackwater expanded their security-related work and followed the U.S. military into Afghanistan. Without his intervention, the massacre would have continued. The Nisour Square massacre came at the high point of the bloodletting in Iraq, when President George W. Bush had ordered a "surge" in troop deployments and operations throughout Iraq to. The massacre took place in 2007, when the. 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