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"Our blood is cheaper than water": Trump's pardon reopened massacres in Iraq
Many in the country reacted angrily to the news that outgoing President Hanan had killed four mercenaries of the private security company Blackwater, who were convicted of killing 14 unarmed Iraqis in 2007.
"He is more criminal, Iraq should ask the Biden administration to cancel the pardon"
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Iraq
United States
Donald Trump
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Saturday, 26 December 2020, 18:16
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Iraqi residents have reacted angrily to a pardon granted by US President Donald Trump to four Blackwater security guards who were imprisoned after massacring civilians in the country in 2007.
The four were part of a security convoy that opened fire on protesters in Nasur Square in central Baghdad.
Fourteen people were killed, including a nine-year-old boy, and many more were injured.
The four mercenaries - Paul Slaff, Ivan Liberty, Dustin Hard and Nicholas Sultan - fired indiscriminately at machine guns, grenade launchers and sniper fire at unarmed protesters.
The massacre was one of the low points in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and many in Iraq saw the conviction of the four as a rare case in which justice was done to U.S. citizens who were responsible for crimes in the country.
Residents of Baghdad described the outgoing president's pardon as a "brutal slap in the face" and an insult.
Adel al-Hazali, whose father Ali was killed in the massacre, said he was shocked.
"There is no justice. I call on the American people to stand with us. I lost my father, and many innocent women and children were also killed," he told the Guardian.
"I ask the US administration to reconsider this, because this decision causes the courts in the United States to lose their status. Trump has no right to pardon the killers of innocent people."
Hyder Salman, a human rights activist, told of his professor being injured in the massacre and losing his wife and children.
"One of the reasons he survived was to condemn the killers," he tweeted.
"The person who released these criminals is more of a criminal. The Iraqi government should ask the Biden administration to cancel the pardon."
The defense claimed they returned rebel fire, the administration denied.
The four convicted mercenaries (Photo: AP)
"That day changed my life forever"
The private security companies, which supported logistics companies, or in some cases the United States military, have been a constant source of complaints from Iraqi citizens about the harsh hand and disrespect shown to the locals.
Saluk, Liberty and Hard were convicted of numerous counts of manslaughter in 2015, while Sultan, the first to open fire, was convicted of first-degree murder.
He was sent to life imprisonment, and the rest to 30 years in prison each.
A federal court initially dismissed the charges, but Biden, who was then vice president, promised to re-prosecute them as indeed happened in 2015.
"This will be the first thing we talk to him about," said an adviser to the Iraqi prime minister.
During the sentencing of the four, the prosecution said that "the sheer scale of the loss of human life and unnecessary suffering caused by the criminal conduct of the defendants on September 16, 2007 is shocking."
Following the announcement of the release of the four, as part of another wave of pardons from the outgoing president, Brian Berlig, one of their lawyers, said: "Paul Sluch and his colleagues should not have spent even one minute in jail. I do not know my soul from this wonderful news."
Trump pardoned last November three American soldiers convicted of war crimes, including a former officer convicted of murder after ordering his soldiers to kill three unarmed Afghans.
The FBI compared it to the Lee Mae massacre in Vietnam.
The square in Baghdad after the killing, 2007 (Photo: AP)
During the Blackwater mercenary trial, their defense attorneys said they returned fire after a rebel ambush.
However, the U.S. administration claimed in a memo released after the sentencing that "none of the victims had rebelled or posed any threat" to the convoy.
The memo included quotes from relatives of the murdered
"That day changed my life forever. That day ruined my life completely," said Muhammad Kinani, the father of nine-year-old Ali.
FBI investigators who visited the scene a few days later described it as an "Iraqi Mei Lei massacre," referring to a massacre by the United States military during the Vietnam War, after which only one soldier was convicted.
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"Americans have never treated us as equals"
Following the massacre, the Iraqi government announced an immediate cessation of Blackwater operations in the country, although this only happened in 2009. In the end, the State Department has stopped using the company to provide security for its people, and the massacre led the Investigation of Blackwater and industry contractors Private wider by the State Department, the Pentagon, Congress and the United Nations.
Against the background of intensive investigation, the company's founder Erik Prince severed ties with her in In 2010, however, he remained in the field, setting up a United States-led mercenary army led by the United States, which has reportedly been deployed since
Yemen.Blackwater's latest incarnation, "Academic," was privately owned by investors. Pentagon protecting US facilities in war zones and training of soldiers.
all 14 families of the victims, except one, received compensation from Blackwater: one hundred thousand dollars to relatives killed, and 50 thousand dollars to relatives of the wounded. the only rejected the offer was Haitham al-quarters, Who lost his wife, the doctor, and his son, Ahmed, a 20-year-old medical student.
Ahmed's former classmate said Trump's pardon did not surprise Iraqi people. "Americans have never treated us Iraqis as equals," she told AFP. "Water and the demands for justice and responsibility are a nuisance."
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