None of the bullets the lab had available could be matched to the rifles used by the guards. [55], On April 1, 2009, the Associated Press reported that forensic tests on bullets were inconclusive. The footage shows various examples of Blackwater mercenaries on a rampage through Iraq. Difficult. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. Aug 15, 2019. Last year, Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder after murdering an aspiring doctor without provocation. [47], The U.S. State Department said it planned to investigate what it called a "terrible incident". Very difficult. square_footage = length_A * length_B This might sound like a simple mathematical formula, but it is precisely how to measure the square footage of a rectangular room in real life. Fr nhere Informationen zur Nutzung Ihrer Daten lesen Sie bitte unsere Datenschutzerklrung und Cookie-Richtlinie. [79] Three weeks later, Vice President Joe Biden, who was overseeing U.S. policy in Iraq, promised Iraqi leaders the U.S. would appeal the dismissal of these charges. [28] TST 22 arrived at Nisour Square after Raven 23 had left; when TST 22 tried to withdraw, its route was blocked by Iraqi Army and Police vehicles. This decision was appealed by the Department of Justice and in 2011, the ruling was reversed. In 2015, Slatten was sentenced to life in prison while Slough, Heard, and Liberty were sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. This is a mashup from the men of Raven 23 (SRS EP . In the end, after seven weeks of deliberations, Slough, Heard, and Liberty were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and Slatten was found guilty of murder, since he was responsible for the first death in Nisour Square, Reuters reports. Two days after the meeting with Carroll, Richter and Thomas were told by an embassy official to "leave Iraq immediately.". [38] Waxman stated that "the controversy over Blackwater is an unfortunate demonstration of the perils of excessive reliance on private security contractors. From left to right: Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten, and Paul Slough. The massacre lasted four hours and only ended when another US soldier, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, intervened and ordered his men to shoot any Charlie Company troops who shot at the civilians. For several years, a private security firm known as Blackwater Security Consulting received an unprecedented level of funding and incredibly limited oversight from the United States. Unfortunately, Blackwater continued to operate in Iraq and the United States didn't cancel their contract. Friend of mine was in Iraq he was a marine and he said blackwater would start shit call for assistance and then nope the fuck out and make them deal with a fucked situation. Raven 4 sent up a distress signal, triggering a . The Nisour Square massacre occurred on September 16, 2007, when employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (now Constellis), a private military company contracted by the US government to provide security services in Iraq, shot at Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad, while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy. Nine-year-old Ali Kinani died from a gunshot wound to the head in the Nisour Square massacre. Within 20 minutes, 17 civilians had been fatally shot, including two boys who were only nine and eleven years old, and 20 more had been wounded. But according to ICD, some of the plaintiffs claimed that they were "forced to accept the settlement.". The Nisour Square massacre was one of the most publicized US crimes of the 8-year Iraq war. Blackwater, which has since rebranded itself twice and is now known as Academi, is a private military company that, at the time, had a $1 billion contract with the United States government to provide security services to US officials in Iraq. Reports differ on what actually happened at Nisour Square that caused the employees to open fireBlackwater claimed that Iraqi insurgents had ambushed the convoy and the Blackwater employees were returning fire. Batya () is the founder of Reaper Feed. As the Blackwater convoy approached Nisour Square, a Kia sedan drove directly towards the convoy and disregarded a police . The company said the civilians were killed during a shootout after one of their convoys came under attack in Nisoor Square, in an affluent neighbourhood of the capital. The Nisour Square massacre was a blot the US cannot get rid of even today. [78] The opinion elaborated "the government failed to establish that the Iraqi witnesses it presented to the second grand jury were not in any way influenced by their previous exposure to the defendants' compelled statements. Erik Prince, who founded Blackwater, is no longer involved with the. The perimeter wall to the Army Base is just east of the square. and tried to gesture to his colleagues in an attempt to stop the shooting. Why the case of four Blackwater guards, charged with murdering 14 Iraqis in Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007 (the Iraqi government had originally accused them of killing 17), took so long to reach . [43], The Private Security Company Association of Iraq, in a document last updated on July 3, 2007, listed Blackwater as not having a license to operate in Iraq despite their attempts to apply for one. Following this, it became one of the main private military companies employed in Iraq, but soon earned a reputation for being trigger happy and going rogue. 2007-10-24 Nisour -- footage of the event?-- , You Tube, Nisour Square Massacre Nicholas Slatten, who was the first to open fire, was charged with murder because the statute of limitations prevented the FBI from charging him with manslaughter. [25], A State Department spot report published the same day as the incident stated that eight to ten attackers opened fire on Raven 23 "from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi police uniforms" after the convoy had entered Nisour Square,[26] starting at 12:08p.m.[27] The report added that another Blackwater Tactical Support Team (TST 22), who had escorted the officials and TST 4 back to the Green Zone, was redirected to support Raven 23. Slatten faced a potential sentence of life in prison. [97], On December 22, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump granted full presidential pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard. Raven 23 "returned defensive fire" and withdrew from Nisour Square with one of its BearCat vehicles in tow. The BBC reports that during Slatten's second trial in 2018, a mistrial was declared after the jury deliberated for 16 days. The Blackwater company itself wasn't charged. NPR reports that sometime after the Al-Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, where 17 sailors were killed, Blackwater won a $46 million contract from the U.S government for "training sailors in counterterrorism." John M. Patarini was the FBI agent leading the investigation, and although they went into the investigation thinking that civilians had merely been caught in crossfire, they soon realized that "it was a massacre along the lines of My Lai in Vietnam," per The Guardian. Prosecutors argued the men did not face hostile gunfire when they began shooting, and continued to shoot despite the lack of threats. However, the vehicles had already been repaired and repainted by the time the FBI found them. Around 12 pm on September 16, 2007, 15 Blackwater employees in the tactical support team known as Raven 23 were driving four trucks in an armed convoy through Nisour Square to get to the site of a car bombing, which had happened earlier in the day. [88], On August 4, 2017, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned Slatten's murder conviction and ordered the other defendants to be re-sentenced to time already served. After roughly 20 minutes of shooting, the Blackwater guards convoy drove out of the square, leaving multicolored smoke bombs in their wake. With the contract to provide security for L. Paul Bremer, Blackwater essentially "cement[ed] its presence at the center of conflict in Iraq," per PBS. [54] He received an honorable discharge in 2002 and then enlisted in the Texas National Guard. This is a mashup from the men of Raven 23 (SRS EP . By 2007, the State Department started reviewing Blackwater's $1 billion contract and they discovered a slew of misconduct. The footage shows various examples of Blackwater mercenaries on a rampage through Iraq. Protesters in Nisour Square demand reforms Last updated Sep 3, 2022 Dozens of citizens organized a protest this Friday afternoon in Nisour Square in capital Baghdad, to demand putting an end to corruption and quotas, as well forming a "national salvation" government with absolute power. One journalist, Robert Young Pelton, spent one month with Blackwater in Iraq and stated that Blackwater guards use their machine guns like car horns.. The report found that the use of contractors such as Blackwater was a "new form of mercenary activity" and illegal under international law; however, the United States is not a signatory of the 1989 UN Mercenary Convention banning the use of mercenaries. And Blackwater didn't make the investigation easy. One of the Blackwater guards reportedly screamed "No! In fact, they even renewed the contract in 2008. [83], In September 2013, the charges against Ball were dropped. In events that are eerily similar to the horrific My Lai massacre of 1968, the Blackwater guards continued to fire at unarmed civilians. Although one military review found that "all of the killings were unjustified and potentially criminal," in November 2007, the FBI determined that only 14 out of the 17 killings were unjustified, according to Reuters. An Iraqi policeman went over to the car, possibly to help the passenger, but the vehicle kept moving and it looked to the guards as if the policeman was pushing the car towards the Blackwater TST. A Blackwater team was already there, with the diplomat, who ended up being escorted back to the International Zone without any incident. Raven 23, under the command of Blackwater contractor Jimmy Watson, was ordered to secure an evacuation route through Nisour Square for . "The jury got it exactly right, this was murder," US Judge Royce Lamberth said while pronouncing the life sentence in Washington, DC. IE 11 is not supported. ft. B: 12 ft. x 10 ft. = 120 sq. May 9, 2015, 9:30 PM. Robert Young Pelton, a journalist who spent a month with Blackwater in Iraq, said that the guards "use[d] their machine guns like car horns," per Tidings Media. The Nisour Square shooting damaged the reputation of Blackwater, which changed its name to Xe Services and then Academi. A Blackwater sniper, Nicholas Slatten, opened fire first and shot the driver of the car. Add a Comment. Five Blackwater security guards are getting ready to turn themselves in, after being indicted on manslaughter and gun charges in connection with a 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisour Square. [19] A Blackwater spokeswoman responded to the findings by saying Blackwater "supports the stringent accountability of the industry. The vehicle struck the . However, according to The New York Times, the Iraqi government technically didn't have the legal authority to do so since the U.S.-led transitional government shielded security contractors from Iraqi laws, per CNN. One such incident is the Blackwater massacre, also known as the Nisour Square massacre. After years of investigations and hearings, they had finally been convicted late last . Tip: If you can't picture what a square foot is . [89][90][91] The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's fractured per curiam decision first found that Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act authorized the prosecutions, over the partial dissent of Judge Janice Rogers Brown. In Nisour Square, the Blackwater team later claimed that they were "engaged with small arms fire" by an "estimated 8-10 persons." [57], In October 2007, the United Nations released a two-year study that stated that private contractors, although hired as "security guards", were performing military duties. According to CNN, between January and September 2005, Blackwater guards fired their guns 195 times, "an average of 1.4 times a week." Without his intervention, the massacre would have continued. Thus, Blackwater had no evidence that its guards were only returning firean action that would have been within the rules of engagement, and not illegal. 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