Seventeen Iraqi civilians, including 9- and 11-year-old boys, were killed when private contractors for US security firm Blackwater fired at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007.
Fourteen of those deaths were unjustified under the rules of the use of lethal force by security contractors, according to an FBI investigation.
On Tuesday, Trump forgave all four.
“My message to US President Trump is not to forgive or release the perpetrators, they are terrorists,” Jasim Mohammed Al-Nasrawi, a police officer wounded in the attack, told CNN by telephone from Baghdad on Wednesday.
“I am still not one hundred percent recovered from my head injury, which [was] suffered in the shooting by Blackwater guards in 2007, and were not fully compensated for the attack. I will not give up my right to this case, I will not give up ”, he added.
Al-Nasrawi, who attended the trial in the United States as a witness, said he received some compensation after the decision, but believes he owes more.
The 2014 trial heard distressing details from Iraqis who described the “horror” of watching the shootings unfold.
“Anything that moved in Nusoor Square was shot. Women, children, young people, they shot everyone,” said Hassan Jaber Salman, a lawyer who survived the attack with his son, during the trial.
Blackwater said its convoy was attacked and defense lawyers said in court that witness reports were falsified. But witnesses said the contractors opened fire without provocation. Seventy-one witnesses testified in total, including 30 from Iraq – the largest group of foreign witnesses traveling to the US for a criminal trial.
The massacre sparked outrage in Iraq and raised questions about the responsibility of foreign security personnel in the country, which was not subject to Iraqi law under an order from the US-led occupation government at the time.
The 2014 trial put even more spotlight on Blackwater’s obscure practices, which at the time of the murders maintained a $ 1 billion contract with the government to protect American diplomats.
In more than 80% of the cases examined, Blackwater reported that its forces fired first, the Congressional report said.
Survivor Al-Nasrawi said on Wednesday that, instead of forgiving the killers, “Trump should examine the families of the victims and wounded and look after their health.”
After the pardons, Salman called Trump’s decision shocking, disappointing and “abusive to victims’ rights”.
“The American justice system is known to be fair, but it looks like the American justice system is not fair,” he told CNN.
CNN’s Samantha Beech contributed to this report.