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WASHINGTON (AP): President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned four former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that left more than a dozen Iraqi civilians dead and sparked an international uproar over the use of private security guards in a war zone.
Supporters of former Blackwater Worldwide contractors had lobbied for clemency, arguing that the men had been unduly punished in an investigation and prosecution that they said was tainted. All four were serving long prison terms.
“Paul Slough and his colleagues did not deserve to spend a minute in prison,” said Brian Heberlig, attorney for one of the four pardoned defendants. “I am overwhelmed with excitement at this fantastic news.”
The pardons, issued in the final days of Trump’s single term, reflect Trump’s apparent willingness to give the U.S. military and contractors the benefit of the doubt when it comes to acts of war zone violence against civilians.
Last November, he pardoned a former US military commando who was to stand trial next year for the murder of an alleged Afghan bomb maker and a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to shoot three Afghans.
The Blackwater case has taken a tricky path since the killings in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square in September 2007, when the men, former veterans who worked as contractors for the State Department, opened fire in the crowded roundabout.
Prosecutors claimed that the heavily armed Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers. Defense attorneys argued that their clients responded to fire after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents.
They were convicted in 2014 after a months-long trial in federal court in Washington, with each man defiantly asserting their innocence at a sentencing hearing the following year.
“I feel completely betrayed by the very government that I served with honor,” Slough told the court to an audience packed with nearly 100 friends and family of the guards.
Slough and two others, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard, were sentenced to 30 years in prison, although after a federal appeals court ordered their re-sentencing, each received substantially shorter punishments.
A fourth, Nicholas Slatten, whom prosecutors blamed for initiating the shooting, was sentenced to life in prison.
Later, a federal appeals court overturned Slatten’s first-degree murder conviction, but the Justice Department tried him again and secured another life sentence last year.
Heard’s attorney, David Schertler, said they were “excited and grateful” for the forgiveness. “We have always believed in Dustin’s innocence and have never given up the fight to vindicate him. He served his country with honor and, finally today, he has his deserved freedom.”
A Liberty attorney, Bill Coffield, said, “These are four innocent guys and it’s completely justified.”
The American Civil Liberties Union condemned the pardons. Hina Shamsi, director of the organization’s national security project, said in a statement that the shootings caused “devastation in Iraq, shame and horror in the United States, and a global scandal. President Trump insults the memory of Iraqi victims and degrades even more “your office with this action”.
The trial came years after the first indictment against the men was dismissed when a judge ruled that the Justice Department had withheld evidence from a grand jury and violated the guards’ constitutional rights.
The firing outraged many Iraqis, who said it showed that Americans considered themselves above the law.
Joe Biden, speaking in Baghdad in 2010 as vice president, expressed “personal regret” for the shootings by declaring that the United States would appeal the court decision. The Justice Department later revived the case.
Blackwater contractors were notorious in Baghdad at the time and were frequently accused of firing shots on the slightest pretext, even to clear the way in traffic. The roundabout shooting was notable for the death toll, but it was far from an isolated incident in Iraq at the time.
Armed militants opposing the US presence in Iraq used to deploy vehicle bombs alongside Western and Iraqi caravans in traffic, causing the ubiquitous armed guards accompanying most of the dignitaries to become more nervous and In the Blackwater case, they insisted on not allowing other vehicles to approach them.
The Blackwater firm was founded by Erik Prince, a Trump ally and brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Since then it has changed its name. – AP
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