The 15 people President Trump pardoned Tuesday evening include the first two congressmen who endorsed him for president — former Reps. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), both convicted of financial crimes — two people jailed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and four private guards working for Blackwater who were serving long sentences for an unprovoked and unnecessary 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that left 17 Iraqis dead, including two boys, ages 8 and 11. Blackwater, since sold and renamed Academi, is a private military contractor outfit headed at the time by Erik Prince, brother to Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos. The Nisour Square massacre marked a low point in U.S.-Iraqi relations after the 2003 U.S. invasion, and federal prosecutors spent years bringing the four Blackwater guards — Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard — to justice. After a federal judge in 2009 dismissed the first murder and manslaughter convictions of the Blackwater contractors, ruling the evidence was tainted, then-Vice President Joe Biden said at a press conference in Baghdad that the men had not been acquitted and the U.S. would appeal the decision. “In subsequent years, as the case continued, the contractors became known in conservative media as the ‘Biden Four,'” The Washington Post reports. Slatten was eventually sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder, while the other three were convicted of manslaughter and given sentences of 12 to 15 years.
via yahoo: The Blackwater guards Trump pardoned were jailed for a massacre of civilians, including 2 kids
siehe auch: Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians. Four guards fired on unarmed crowd in Baghdad in 2007, killing 14 and sparking outrage over use of private security in war zones. Donald Trump has pardoned four security guards from the private military firm Blackwater who were serving jail sentences for killing 14 civilians including two children in Baghdad in 2007, a massacre that sparked an international outcry over the use of mercenaries in war. The four guards – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten – were part of an armoured convoy that opened fire indiscriminately with machine-guns, grenade launchers and a sniper on a crowd of unarmed people in a square in the Iraqi capital. The Nisour Square massacre was one of the lowest episodes of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Slough, Liberty and Heard were convicted on multiple charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter in 2014, while Slatten, who was the first to start shooting, was convicted of first-degree murder. Slattern was sentenced to life and the others to 30 years in prison each. (…) FBI investigators who visited the scene in the following days described it as the “My Lai massacre of Iraq” – a reference to the infamous slaughter of civilian villagers by US troops during the Vietnam war in which only one soldier was convicted.
siehe auch: Nisour Square massacre. The Nisour Square massacre occurred on September 16, 2007, when employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (now Academi), 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.[1][2][3] The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States.[4] In 2014, four Blackwater employees were tried[5] and convicted in U.S. federal court; one of murder, and the other three of manslaughter and firearms charges;[6] all four convicted were pardoned by Donald Trump in December 2020.[7] Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. The Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul stated that the killings were unprovoked.[8][9] The next day, Blackwater Worldwide’s license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked.[10] The U.S. State Department has said that “innocent life was lost”,[11] and according to The Washington Post, a military report appeared to corroborate “the Iraqi government’s contention that Blackwater was at fault”.[12] The Iraqi government vowed to punish Blackwater.[13] The incident sparked at least five investigations, including one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[14] The FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause.[15]
In December 2008, the U.S. charged five Blackwater guards with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and a weapons violation but on December 31, 2009, a U.S. district judge dismissed all charges on the grounds that the case against the Blackwater guards had been improperly built on testimony given in exchange for immunity.[16][17] Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal.[18] In April 2011, a U.S. federal appeals court reinstated the manslaughter charges against Paul A. Slough, Evan S. Liberty, Dustin L. Heard and Donald W. Ball after closed-door testimony. The court said “We find that the district court’s findings depend on an erroneous view of the law”.[19][20] A fifth guard had his charges dismissed, and a sixth guard (Jeremy Ridgeway) pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.[3] On January 6, 2012, Blackwater settled a lawsuit filed on behalf of six of the victims for an undisclosed sum.[21] On October 22, 2014, a Federal District Court jury convicted Nick Slatten of first-degree murder, and three other guards (Slough, Liberty and Heard) guilty of all three counts of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to commit a violent crime.[6][22] On April 13, 2015, Slatten was sentenced to life in prison, while the other three guards were sentenced to 30 years in prison.[23]
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