Pardons for Killings of Iraqi Civilians by US Contractors Sparking Angry Response

Monitors in the courtroom showed a picture of a smiling 9-year-old boy as his father pleaded for punishment from four US government contractors convicted of shootings that killed that child and more than a dozen Iraqi civilians.

“What is the difference,” Mohammad Kinani al-Razzaq asked a Washington judge at an emotional sentencing hearing in 2015, “between these criminals and terrorists?”

The shooting of civilians by Blackwater employees in a crowded Baghdad roundabout in September 2007 sparked an international outcry, left a black eye on the reputation of US operations at the height of the Iraq war, and put the government on the defensive for the use of private contractors in military areas. The resulting criminal prosecutions lasted for years in Washington but came to an abrupt end on Tuesday when President Donald Trump pardoned the convicted contractors, an act that human rights activists and some Iraqis denounced as a judicial error.

The news comes at a sensitive time for the Iraqi leadership, which is trying to balance the growing calls from some Iraqi factions for a complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq with what they see as the need for a more gradual reduction.

“The infamous Blackwater company killed Iraqi citizens in Nisoor Square. Today we hear that they were released on the personal order of President Trump, as if they didn’t care about the Iraqi blood spilled,” said Saleh Abed, a Baghdad resident who was walking through the square. .

The United Nations Human Rights Office said Wednesday it was “deeply concerned” by the pardons, which it said “contribute to impunity and have the effect of encouraging others to commit such crimes in the future.” The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said the pardons “did not take into account the seriousness of the crime committed” and that it would urge the United States to reconsider.

Al-Razzaq, the father of the murdered child, told the BBC that the clemency decision “again broke my life.”

The contractors’ attorneys, who had aggressively defended the men for more than a decade, offered a different opinion.

They have long claimed that the shooting started only after the men were ambushed by gunfire from insurgents and then returned fire in defense. They have pointed out problems with the prosecution (the first accusation was dismissed by a judge) and argued that the trial that ended with their sentences was tainted by false testimonies and withheld evidence.

“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 by the excitement of this fantastic news.”

Although the circumstances of the shooting have long been questioned, there is no doubt that the episode of September 16, 2007, which began after contractors were ordered to create a safe evacuation route for a diplomat after the explosion of A car bomb, it was a low point for US-Iraq relations, comes a few years after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

The FBI and Congress opened investigations and the State Department, which used the Blackwater firm for the safety of diplomats, ordered a review of practices. The guards would subsequently be charged with the deaths of 14 civilians, including women and children, in what US prosecutors say was a savage and unprovoked attack with snipers, machine guns and grenade launchers against unarmed Iraqis.

Robert Ford, who served as an American diplomat in Iraq for five years, met with the widows and other relatives of the victims after the murders, handing out envelopes with money in compensation and formal apologies from the United States, although without admitting guilt as investigations were ongoing.

“It was one of the worst times I can remember in my time” in Iraq, said Ford, who teaches at Yale University. “That was just horrible. We had killed these people’s families and they were still terribly distressed.”

Most of the widows took the envelopes in silence. Some of the adult male relatives of those killed spoke bitterly. “How could you do this? We must have justice,” Ford said in an interview Wednesday.

Adding to the furious consequences among Iraqis was the involvement of Blackwater, a security company founded by Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who is an ally of Trump and the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The company had already earned an unfavorable reputation for acting with impunity, and its guards were often accused of shooting on the slightest pretext, even to clear the way in traffic.

A review of 2007 Blackwater incident reports by House Democrats found that Blackwater contractors reported participating in 195 “escalation of force” shootings in the previous two years, and Blackwater reported that its guards fired first more than 80 percent of the time.

The 2007 Baghdad roundabout assassinations were among many attacks, large and small, that affected civilians and served to turn even some early Iraqi supporters of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein against the Americans. In 2005, for example, Marines were accused of killing 24 unarmed men, women and children in the western city of Haditha angered by a car bomb attack. US military prosecutions for those murders ended without jail time.

The case against the Blackwater guards swept through the Washington courts, and at one point a federal appeals court overturned the first-degree murder conviction of a defendant, Nicholas Slatten, and drastically reduced the prison sentences of the men. other three. All four were in prison when the pardons were issued.

The guards defiantly asserted his innocence at his 2015 sentencing hearing, and Slough claimed that he felt “completely betrayed by the very government I served with honor.” Another defendant, Dustin Heard, said that he “could not honestly tell the court that I did something wrong.”

The judge rejected that characterization, saying that “the general insanity that happened here can never be tolerated by the court.”

In addition to the legal impact, there could be diplomatic and strategic consequences, just as Iraq assesses the US military presence there.

In Iraq, said Ford, the former diplomat, the pardons “will necessarily give some ammunition to those who say they take the Americans out now.”

– AP