An Iraqi traffic officer, Sarhan Thiab, halted northbound traffic on Yarmouk Street. In the last month of his term, U.S. President Donald Trump issued pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard. 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. [6][85][86] Jurors sided with prosecutors' contention that the shooting was a criminal act, not a battlefield encounter gone wrong. [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. John M. Patarini was the FBI agent leading the investigation, and although they went into the investigation thinking that civilians had merely been caught in crossfire, they soon realized that "it was a massacre along the lines of My Lai in Vietnam," per The Guardian. One guard wouldnt stop shooting until another Blackwater guard drew a gun on him and threatened to shoot him if he didnt stop. In August 2019, Slatten was once more sentenced to life in prison without parole, Al Jazeera reports. Receive exclusive resources to become a better writer, economist, and historian. 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. By 2007, the State Department started reviewing Blackwater's $1 billion contract and they discovered a slew of misconduct. On 16 September 2007, Blackwater employees escorted a convoy of US State Department vehicles to a meeting in western Baghdad. The lawyer who represented families of the victims of the Nisour Square massacre shares their story. [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 Iraqi government, citing eyewitness reports, concluded that the Blackwater guards fired on . The Blackwater team also claimed that some of the "aggressors" were dressed like Iraqi Police as well as civilians. And despite subsequent trials, it's unclear if the victims of the massacre and their families got the justice they deserve. In Nisour Square, the Blackwater team later claimed that they were "engaged with small arms fire" by an "estimated 8-10 persons." [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 footage shows various examples of Blackwater mercenaries on a rampage through Iraq. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most publicized US crimes of the 8-year Iraq war. And that harm was only the beginning, before the world would learn of Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and Nisour Square. 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. 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. 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." and tried to gesture to his colleagues in an attempt to stop the shooting. 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.". Pronunciation of Nisour square massacre with 1 audio pronunciations. 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. 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. [45] Also, it is not clear whether the license revocation is permanent. PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): Back in 2007, four Blackwater contractors were tasked with defending American diplomats at the height of the Iraq War -- remember, 2007, dangerous times. Ali Khalaf Salman, a traffic cop who was there, recounted seeing an American shoot Ahmed. How did the Casio F91W Become a Terrorist Icon? And it's estimated that at least one other person died from the second shooting incident. In the wake of the massacre in 2007, the Iraqi government banned Blackwater from working in the country and cancelled their license. 0ur_Benefactors 6 yr. ago. 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 Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul stated that the killings were unprovoked. One such incident is the Blackwater massacre, also known as the Nisour Square massacre. Ultimately, Blackwater repeatedly insisted that their guards "were fired upon and responded appropriately." However, according to Reuters, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, claiming that "the U.S. government had recklessly violated the defendants' constitutional rights." It was September 16, 2007, when a Blackwater security team - following a very massive explosion in Nisour Square, Baghdad - responded to assist another team in the protection of a U.S. diplomat. Blackwater guards were also known for driving on the wrong side of the road and crashing into civilian cars. Of the 17 that lost their lives, two were children under the age of 12, with the youngest aged 9 years old. On Sunday the 16 th, a Blackwater convoy on contract for the State Department came to a halt at a Baghdad intersection called Nisour Square. one of the most infamous modern mercenary companies to have ever existed. 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. This case study addresses on incident that arose with one such contractor, Blackwater Worldwide. The Nisour Square massacre was a blot the US cannot get rid of even today. (The mercenaries were only charged for 14 of the 17 murders.) Most reports, however, state that Blackwater guards opened fire when one car didnt stop at the intersection. Additionally, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating Blackwaters account of events, Blackwater claimed that their account of events could be corroborated and proven by damage done to Blackwater vehicles. 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. Circuit ordered for a new trial to be held, stating that Slatten should've had a separate trial. TwoFeather - 308 Views. Meanwhile, it took two weeks before a 10-person FBI team was sent to investigate the massacre for the government. 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 facts of the Nisour Square massacre case have been well documented and authenticated. The Blackwater guards were escorting a diplomatic convoy when, without provocation, they opened fire in the crowded square with machine guns, grenade launchers and other weapons. The massacre lasted four hours and only ended when another US soldier, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, intervened and ordered his men to shoot any Charlie Company troops who shot at the civilians. Prosecutors argued the men did not face hostile gunfire when they began shooting, and continued to shoot despite the lack of threats. 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. POV from Ukrainian tank during an offensive, Point blank kills: intense trench firefight caught on GoPro camera. When painting a house, installing flooring, or building a home, the square footage of the property is often used to determine the cost or materials to be used. Slatten faced a potential sentence of life in prison. ft. Footage was nowhere to be found and many other things that would have justified the actions of Raven 23 after they were being fired upon by enemy forces. It outraged Iraqis, put severe strain on. Moderate. Opines that the iraqi shooting by blackwater guards was unethical and impacted public impressions of all private security companies operating overseas. 13 of the Iraqi witnesses were people who had been injured in the massacre and several others were relatives of people who had been murdered. The trial lasted ten weeks, and the FBI had flown in 30 witnesses from Iraq, which marked the largest number of foreign witnesses to ever be brought to the US in a criminal trial. [57], In October 2007, the United Nations released a two-year study that stated that private contractors, although hired as "security guards", were performing military duties. 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. [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. Iraqi police and Iraqi Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for fragmentation grenades, opened fire at the Blackwater men, to which they responded. The Blackwater Massacre and What Really Happened in Nisour Square. Formed in 1997 as Blackwater Training, the companys initial aim was to provide training services to US military and law enforcement and soon they opened multi-million dollar training facilities in the US to do so. Instead, they tried to help and protect Blackwater by cleaning up evidence in the square and promising the employees involved immunity for what they told State Department officials, which they didnt have the authority to do. [16] The FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause. This event goes to show how the US military has a tendency to make excuses and cover up its inexcusable actions, as well as not holding military personnel who perpetrate these actions accountable. 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. State Department investigators of the September 16h Blackwater Nisour Square shooting have granted limited immunity to Blackwater operators who were present at the incident, according to the . [34], In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Blackwater's rights to conduct work in Iraq were temporarily suspended. After the September 11th attacks, Blackwater expanded their security-related work and followed the U.S. military into Afghanistan. The shape is of a large rectangle and a smaller rectangle. The soldiers had been given bad intelligence, and rather than leave when they found the intelligence to be false, they massacred innocent people. In events that are eerily similar to the horrific My Lai massacre of 1968, the Blackwater guards continued to fire at unarmed civilians. The Blackwater company itself wasn't charged. He has utilized KGB-era narrative control devices to flood social media with disinformation. [50], On October 4, 2007, U.S. military reports indicated Blackwater's guards had opened fire without provocation and used excessive force. By the time the shooting died down, 14 Iraqi civilians lay dead in what became known as the Nisour Square massacre. Fr nhere Informationen zur Nutzung Ihrer Daten lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklrung und Cookie-Richtlinie. On September 16, a Blackwater USA security unit returning to base after having dropped off the person it was guarding opened fire at Nisour Square, near Baghdad's Green Zone. Riz Khan - Blackwater in Iraq - 24 Apr 07. A . The perimeter wall to the Army Base is just east of the square. 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. In 2003, the firm was tasked with its first overseas contract following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 when it was given a $21 million contract to provide security and two military-grade helicopters for the head of the U.S. occupation in Iraq, Paul Bremer. Reports differ on what actually happened at Nisour Square that caused the employees to open fireBlackwater claimed that Iraqi insurgents had ambushed the convoy and the Blackwater employees were returning fire. 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. [83], In September 2013, the charges against Ball were dropped. [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". [42] A spokesman stated that the ban would last for the duration of the investigation, and that it would not be 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. "[21] Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal. 3", is named Paul Slough. I am a senior at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, California, and I swim and play water polo. 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. 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. This wasn't the first time that Blackwater was involved in an unnecessary shooting. 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. 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. 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. 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