BAGHDAD (AP) – Faris Fadel had just one word to describe the Trump administration’s recent forgiveness of four private security contractors convicted of murdering Iraqi civilians – including his brother – in public square 13 years ago: Unfair.
Fadel’s brother Osama Abbas was on his way to work on that fateful day. He had just crossed a street to Baghdad’s Nisoor Square to make a money transfer – a last-minute change in plans that would cost the 41-year-old electrical engineer his life.
At the time, Blackwater had been hired to provide security for American diplomats in Iraq. Four years after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein ended up toppling. The four men, military veterans who work as contractors for the State Department, opened fire at the crowded roundabout, killing 14 Iraqis, including a child, and injuring more than a dozen.
The contractors’ shooting of civilians has sparked international protests, left a black eye on the reputation of US operations in Iraq and questioned the government’s use of private contractors in military zones.
Nicholas Slatten was convicted of murder, while Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted of manslaughter in 2014 after a months-long trial in federal court in Washington. Each pleaded not guilty.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump forgave them.
“That decision was wrong, it was unfair,” said Fadel, now 44. “How can you free those with blood on their hands?”
Abbas left his wife and four children behind. The oldest was in the second year of university and the youngest in the last year of primary school when she died. He was happy with his life, Fadel recalled.
“He didn’t have much, but he didn’t want anything,” he said.
On that day in September 2007, Abbas was going to work, but decided to cross the street for a money transfer service. Fadel recalled that it was a time when the country was still recovering from the consequences of bloody sectarian street wars. “We were beginning to feel that we could rise to breathe,” he said.
Then, bullets rained on Nisoor Square.
Defense lawyers for the four contractors argued that they were responding to the fire after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. Prosecutors said the convoy launched an unprovoked attack using snipers, machine guns and grenade launchers. Iraqis considered this a massacre.
Years after the attack, Fadel is still bitter. “They were all civilians, they were not guilty of anything,” he said.
Fadel lost not only a brother, but a father figure. Ten years older, Abbas took care of the family after his father’s premature death at a young age.
“He raised me,” he said of Abbas.
Abbas founded his own engineering company and took responsibility for the entire family. His death had sent them into a spiral of shock and insolvency. His widow did not speak for days and his mother went to a wheelchair after suffering a cardiac arrest due to the shock. Abbas’s youngest son suffers from severe depression.
“They destroyed our home and our family,” he said of the contractors.
Five years after Abbas’s death, Fadel assumed the role of the family’s breadwinner. “But I couldn’t do 5% of what my brother did,” he said. “I couldn’t replace their father.”
Fadel also blames the Iraqi government for not pushing for justice earlier. The Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, hours after the pardon was announced, said it would follow up with the United States through diplomatic channels, saying the measure “sadly ignored the dignity of the victims and the feelings and rights of their relatives” .
Asked what would bring him peace of mind more than a decade since his brother’s death, Fadel said that only a death sentence for contractors could bring comfort.
“An eye for an eye,” he said.
“They are guilty, you don’t need a court to prove it.”