Trump pardon for ‘Blackwater four’
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has pardoned four former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that left more than a dozen Iraqi civilians dead and caused an international uproar over the use of private security guards in a war zone.
Supporters of the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide had lobbied for the pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished in an investigation and prosecution they said was tainted.
All four were serving lengthy prison sentences.
Brian Heberlig, a lawyer for one of the four pardoned defendants said: “Paul Slough and his colleagues didn’t deserve to spend one minute in prison.
“I am overwhelmed with emotion at this fantastic news.”
The pardons, issued in the final days of Mr Trump’s single term, reflect his apparent willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to American service members and contractors when it comes to acts of
violence in warzones against civilians.
Last November, he pardoned a former US army commando who was set to stand trial next year in the killing of a suspected Afghan bombmaker and a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to fire upon three Afghans.
The Blackwater case has taken a complicated path since the killings at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square in September 2007, when the men – former veterans working as contractors for the US state department – opened fire at the crowded traffic circle.
Prosecutors asserted the heavily armed Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers.
Defence lawyers argued their clients returned fire after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents.
They were convicted in 2014 after a trial in Washington’s federal court, and each man asserted his innocence at a sentencing hearing the following year.
“I feel utterly betrayed by the same government I served honourably,” Slough told the court.
Slough and two others, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard, were sentenced to 30 years in prison, though after a federal appeals court ordered them to be re-sentenced, they were each given substantially shorter punishments.
A fourth man, Nicholas Slatten, whom prosecutors blamed for starting the firefight, was sentenced to life in prison.
A federal appeals court later overturned Slatten’s first-degree murder conviction, but the justice department tried him again and secured another life sentence last year.
Heard’s lawyer, David Schertler, said they were “thrilled and grateful” for the pardon.
“We have always believed in Dustin’s innocence and have never given up the fight to vindicate him. He served his country honourably and, finally today, he has his welldeserved freedom.”
A lawyer for Liberty, Bill Coffield, said: “These are four innocent guys and it is completely justified.”
However, the American Civil Liberties Union decried the pardons.
The organisation’s Hina Shamsi said the shootings caused “devastation in Iraq, shame and horror in the United States, and a worldwide scandal. President Trump insults the memory of the Iraqi victims and further degrades his office with this action”.