BAGHDAD, Iraq – Haider Ahmed Rabia was stuck in traffic in Baghdad 13 years ago when guards at the American security company Blackwater opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers, killing or injuring at least 31 Iraqi civilians. He still carries some of those bullets in his legs.
In 2014, he was one of the survivors and family members who flew to the United States to testify at the trial of four of those Blackwater guards, said evidence of his injury and his account of that deadly day could help bring justice.
“I went to America and saw the killers walking free, wearing suits,” he said in an interview in Baghdad on Wednesday. “I said, ‘Tomorrow I will return to my country, but will these killers face justice?'”
“Today,” he added, “they proved to me that it was just theater.”
He spoke of President Trump’s pardon this week from those four former Blackwater security contractors, who were convicted in 2014 in what a U.S. court ruled as unprovoked shootings in Nisour Square.
The murders cast a strong spotlight on how American security contractors were acting with impunity after the United States’ invasion of Iraq, angering Iraqi officials, whose own investigation also found no evidence to support Blackwater’s claims that the convoy was attacked first. .
It was the first time that many Americans began to face the growing role that Blackwater – founded by Erik D. Prince, a former member of Navy SEAL and a future ally of President Trump – was playing in the extensive US war on terrorism, winning billions of dollars in contracts while the company accumulated abuse accusations with little consequence.
An already strained relationship between the United States and Iraq has become more bitter. And the reaction against the killings played an important role in helping to accelerate the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in 2011, after Iraqi political leaders rejected American immunity requirements for all American troops.
On Wednesday, the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged the US government to reconsider the decision to pardon the four former Blackwater guards, saying in a statement that the move was inconsistent with the US administration’s “stated commitment to the values of human rights, justice and the rule of law. “
The investigation was one of the most difficult logistically and legally in the Justice Department’s recent history, according to former department officials who worked directly on the case.
“We had never done anything like this before,” said Ronald C. Machen, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia at the time and the officer who oversaw the case. “We had to send teams of FBI agents and prosecutors there to build the case from scratch – they had to risk their lives to collect the evidence. We had to persuade Iraqis who lost loved ones to come and testify. “
“And to think that everything is thrown away,” he added.
Amy Jeffress, a senior Justice Department national security prosecutor who oversaw the case, said the pardons would have a lasting impact on the United States’ perception abroad. “These pardons send a terrible message to the Justice Department and our Iraqi partners who helped in this very difficult case – and, of course, the victims,” she said.
The events at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007 started with an explosion elsewhere: a roadside bomb detonating a few hundred meters from a heavily guarded complex, where officials from the United States Agency for International Development gathered.
In a city where security contractors referred to almost all of Baghdad as a high-risk “red zone”, Blackwater guards in armored vehicles stopped traffic in the square, a busy intersection about a kilometer away from the explosion, to evacuate American officers to Saddam Hussein’s former palace, where the United States headquarters was located.
Blackwater guards said they believed they were attacked first, although Iraqi and American investigations rejected their reports. Another testimony indicated that an initial shot by a Blackwater guard killed a driver whose car was still running. This sparked a volley of machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades from security contractors, which stopped only after 17 civilians died.
More than 30 Iraqi witnesses traveled to the United States in what bailiffs described as the largest number of foreign nationals to testify in a criminal trial in the United States.
During the trial, survivors described the chaos and horror of seeing family members killed when bullets and grenades tore through the thin metal of cheap cars. A father, Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani, sobbed uncontrollably as he testified about the death of his 9-year-old son Ali.
A medical student, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed, and his mother, Mohassin Kathim, were the first to be killed on a mission while their vehicle approached the square. Mr Ahmed was shot in the head and Mrs Kathim cradled his body, screaming for help. The guards continued to fire – round after round, and then an incendiary device, killing her too.
Ahmed’s father later counted 40 bullet holes in the vehicle’s wreckage.
Four former Blackwater guards, Nicholas A. Slatten, Paul A. Slough, Evan S. Liberty and Dustin L. Heard, were convicted by a federal jury in 2014. Although 17 Iraqis were killed, the men were charged in 14 of the deaths the FBI found violated rules for the deadly use of force.
Slatten, a former army sniper accused of firing the first shots, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, while the other three were sentenced to 30 years in prison for manslaughter and possession of a weapon. In 2019, the prison sentences for these three men were reduced by approximately half after a previous court decision overturned the original sentence.
For some survivors of the attack, President Trump’s forgiveness of Blackwater contractors was a bitter reminder of what Iraqis have always seen as a lack of concern for the lives of Iraqis.
Mr. Rabia, who is now 45 and works as an employee of the Ministry of Electricity, still struggles with nerve damage in his legs.
He was driving his taxi in Nisour Square when the Blackwater train passed. Four years later, the US invasion toppled Saddam Hussein. The country had entered a brutal civil war and, in the capital, US forces and security contractors ruled the roads. Some vehicles carried signs with clear warnings: “Stay 100 meters behind or you will be shot.”
Rabia said Iraqi drivers were being held, waiting for the Blackwater convoy to pass, when contractors started opening with their weapons. He was hit while crawling to the passenger side of the taxi to escape.
Power of Mercy ›
Presidential Pardon, Explained
President Trump discussed possible pardons that could test the limits of his constitutional power to nullify criminal liability. Here is a little clarity about your ability to forgive.
-
- Can a president grant prospective pardons before any charges or convictions? Yes. In Ex parte Garland, an 1866 case involving a former Confederate senator who had been pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, the Supreme Court said that the pardoning power “extends to all crimes known to the law and can be exercised at any time after his commission, either before legal proceedings are initiated or pending, or after sentencing and trial. ”It is unusual for a president to issue a prospective pardon before any charges are made, but there are examples, perhaps the most famous for the forgiveness of President Gerald R. Ford in 1974 by Richard M. Nixon for preventing him from being prosecuted after the Watergate scandal.
- Can a president forgive his relatives and close allies? Yes. The Constitution does not prohibit pardons that raise the appearance of self-interest or conflict of interest, even though they may provoke political reaction and public shame. In 2000, shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton issued a series of controversial pardons, including to his stepbrother, Roger Clinton, for a cocaine conviction in 1985, for which he had served about a year in prison. , and to Susan H. McDougal, a former Clinton business partner who was arrested as part of the Whitewater investigation.
- Can a president issue a general pardon? This is not clear. Typically, pardons are written in a way that specifically describes what crimes or sets of activities they apply to. There are few precedents establishing the degree to which a pardon can be used to exclude criminal liability for anything and everything instead.
- Can a president forgive himself? This is not clear. There is no definitive answer because no president has ever tried to forgive himself and then faced prosecution anyway. As a result, there was never a case that gave the Supreme Court a chance to resolve the issue. In the absence of any precedent for control, legal thinkers are divided on the issue.
- Find more answers here.
Another survivor, Jasim Mohammad al-Nasrawi, 41, was shot in the head. He survived after Sahib Fakhir picked him up and threw him in his own car while taking his injured son to the hospital. Fakhir’s son Mahdi Sahib, 23, died on arrival.
“I was surprised at the forgiveness,” said al-Nasrawi, who was driving through Nisour Square to deliver mail. “This is an act of terrorism. Where are the human rights of Trump and the killers? “
The name Blackwater – the company founded by Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and built with the help of former CIA employees – has become synonymous with what Iraqis remember as the Nisour Square massacre. Mr. Prince renamed the company and sold it in 2010, after which it was renamed Academi.
But there is no visible trace in Nisour Square today of the 2007 murder. Young Iraqis take selfies in front of a bronze statue of the stylized eagles that give the square its name, while traffic passes through illuminated billboards advertising appliances and telephone companies.
Saad Eskander, a historian and former head of Iraq’s national archives, said that for many Iraqis, the murders in Nisour Square are seen simply as another worrying chapter, a cause of continued distrust among Americans, in a trauma book that is still is being written.
“Iraq has witnessed many sad events in the past four decades, when the Iran-Iraq war broke out,” he said.
Still, forgiveness opened up some old wounds and renewed calls for Iraq to distance itself even further from the United States.
One of the largest Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Kataib Hezbollah, demanded that US forces leave Iraq to prevent crimes like the murders in Nisour Square from being committed again.
“The criminal Trump intentionally pardoned a group of mercenaries from the terrorist company responsible for the massacre in Nisour Square,” the group said in a statement. “This arbitrary and unfair measure confirms the extent of American hostility to the Iraqi people.”
A prominent Iraqi lawyer, Tariq Harb, said: “It is very painful to see the murderers released.”
“The fact is, they were not punished because they killed Iraqis,” he said. “They were punished for violating American rules of engagement.”
Ali al-Bayati, a member of the Iraqi human rights commission, said the pardons are an indication that no country is serious about prosecuting war crimes.
“It hurts us a lot,” said al-Bayati. “But the defendants are Americans, the law is American and the president is American and there is nothing we can do.”
Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting from Washington.