Blackwater convictions don’t heal Iraqi wounds

Amid black hole of coverage in Iraq, survivors seethe

BAGHDAD — After he attended the federal trial in the United States over the summer of four Blackwater security contractors accused in the 2007 shootings that left 17 Iraqis dead, Sami Hawas Hamoud was eager to keep up with events in the case.

But back home in Baghdad, Hamoud found that the incident had been all but forgotten. Though the shootings had outraged Iraqis seven years ago, there was virtually no mention of the trial in the local news media.

Hamoud, who was badly wounded by gunfire that also killed his mother, didn’t find out that a verdict had come down Wednesday until he received a call from an American reporter the next day. Only then did he learn that the four former contractors had been convicted of several crimes.

Fo r m e r contractor Nicholas Slatten, 30, convicted of murder, faces possible life in prison. Three others convicted of manslaughter and firearm charges — Paul Slough, 35, Dustin Heard, 33, and Evan Liberty, 32 — face 30-year minimum prison sentences.

“It’s not enough,” Hamoud said. “I would prefer that they were executed.”

Hamoud said he is still angry seven years after his back and leg were shredded by bullets. The contractors, who later said their armored convoy had been ambushed by insurgents, opened fire in Baghdad’s crowded Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, with automatic weapons, sniper rifles and grenade launchers.

Hamoud said he is disabled and unable to work as Security contractors opened fire in Baghdad’s crowded Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, killing 17 people. a taxi driver. But the rest of Iraq seems to have moved on, preoccupied with the onslaught in the north and west of the country by Islamic State militants, and by car bombings in Shiite Muslim neighborhoods of the capital that are blamed on Islamic State.

The Ni s o u r Square shootings were just one horrifying incident among countless other tragedies that have befallen Iraq since U.S.-led troops toppled Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003. But for survivors such as Hamoud and relatives of those killed, the incident is a grievous wound that hasn’t healed.

“I’m not satisfied,” Ali Abbas, a heavy-equipment operator whose brother and nephew died in the attack, said after learning of the verdict Thursday. “This trial was just a big show. It was theater.”

Abbas, 53, who said he flew to Washington and testified at the trial, said his brother and nephew were killed as they were searching for an apartment to rent. He never believed he would find true justice in an American court, he said, and he does not believe that justice was fully served with Wednesday’s verdict.

“I don’t have faith in them,” Abbas said of the U.S. courts.

He said he believed more than four gunmen were involved in the shootings, which wounded at least 17 people. And the jury did not hear from enough witnesses, he maintained. At least 75 witnesses testified at the trial, including 30 from Iraq. The jury in Washington deliberated for 28 days before reaching the verdicts.

Abbas said his family received $2 0 0,0 0 0 — $100,000 for each death — from Blackwater, which has been sold and renamed Academi. Hamoud said he received $100,000 for his m o t h e r ’s death and $30,000 for his wounds. The payments were part of a 2010 settlement of civil suits against Blackwater.

The payments may seem large by Iraqi standards. But the money has to support his family for the rest of his life and beyond, Hamoud said.

Even though Iraq seems to have lost interest in the case, Hamoud said he was instructed by government prosecutors to not discuss it with the news media.

“Nobody’s talking about it in Baghdad anyway,” he said. “It happened a long time ago.”