ft. = 141 sq. Women, children, young people, they shot everyone," said Hassan Jaber Salman, a lawyer who survived the attack with his son, during the trial.. Formed in 1997 as Blackwater Training, the companys initial aim was to provide training services to US military and law enforcement and soon they opened multi-million dollar training facilities in the US to do so. department of treasury austin texas 73301 phone number; wii sports club unable to acquire data; randolph high school track and field; huntley ritter parents Despite being heavily involved with the United States' military involvement in Southwest and Central Asia, Blackwater was often harmful and rarely helpful. In 2007, whilst providing an armed escort of U.S. State Department vehicles through Baghdad, Blackwater mercenaries claimed they were ambushed on Nisour Square Massacre and opened fire from all directions. On September 16, 2007, a car bomb went off in Baghdad, Iraq, near the Izdihar Compound, where a U.S. diplomat was meeting with Iraqi officials, at approximately 11:53 AM. Initially, they worked providing training support to law enforcement and the justice department, but as Prince once stated, their "corporate goal [was] to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did to the postal service." Immediately, after the trial, the four Blackwater guards were taken to prison. In the wake of the massacre in 2007, the Iraqi government banned Blackwater from working in the country and cancelled their license. POV from Ukrainian tank during an offensive, Point blank kills: intense trench firefight caught on GoPro camera. Erik Prince. Multiply the length by the width and you'll have the square feet. The U.S. government will retry a former Blackwater Worldwide security guard after a federal appeals court threw out his first-degree murder conviction in shootings that killed 14 unarmed Iraqi. Haythem Ahmed was barely able to identify his son and his wife when he got to the scene, since their car had been completely burned. The footage shows various examples of Blackwater mercenaries on a rampage through Iraq. Last year, Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder after murdering an aspiring doctor without provocation. [12] The U.S. State Department has said that "innocent life was lost",[13] and according to The Washington Post, a military report appeared to corroborate "the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault". [54] He received an honorable discharge in 2002 and then enlisted in the Texas National Guard. In one incident on December 24, 2006, one drunk Blackwater guard, Andrew Moonen, got into an argument with one of the Iraqi vice presidents guards and shot and killed him. 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. It earned so much notoriety that Blackwater was forced to rebrand itself as 'Academi'. [40], On October 11, 2007, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed suit against Blackwater USA under the Alien Tort Claims Act on behalf of an injured Iraqi and the families of three of the seventeen Iraqis who were killed by Blackwater employees during the September 16, 2007, shooting incident. U.S. military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the incident. Blackwater kills 17, bribes to keep Iraqi contracts. Of the 17 that lost their lives, two were children under the age of 12, with the youngest aged 9 years old. According to The New York Times, after the initial gunfire on the first car, the Blackwater guards "unleashed an overwhelming barrage of gunfire" onto Iraqi people who were trying to flee. Very difficult. [10][11] The next day, Blackwater Worldwide's license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked. Circuit ordered for a new trial to be held, stating that Slatten should've had a separate trial. Daten ber Ihr Gert und Ihre Internetverbindung, wie Ihre IP-Adresse, Browsing- und Suchaktivitten bei der Nutzung von Yahoo Websites und -Apps. In total, the defendants faced 14 counts of voluntary manslaughter and 20 counts of attempted manslaughter. [50], On October 4, 2007, U.S. military reports indicated Blackwater's guards had opened fire without provocation and used excessive force. 0 rating. 1:03. Around midday on September 16, 2007, Ahmed Haithem Ahmed and his mother Mohassin were driving to the hospital to pick up Ahmed's father, Haythem, who worked as a pathologist. 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. Blackwater Mercenaries Filmed on a Rampage in Iraq & Shooting Civilians. May 9, 2015, 9:30 PM. Without his intervention, the massacre would have continued. Slatten faced a potential sentence of life in prison. After the September 11th attacks, Blackwater expanded their security-related work and followed the U.S. military into Afghanistan. Slatten was found guilty of one count of first-degree murder, which carried a mandatory life sentence. ", Meanwhile, on October 11, 2007, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed charges against Blackwater U.S.A. on behalf of an injured survivor and the families of three men who were killed during the Nisour Square massacre. The trial against four Blackwater guards involved in the shooting Nicholas Slatten, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, and Paul Slough did not begin until June 17, 2014, because of previous issues the FBI had regarding evidence. We were in a combat zone where things can happen quite unexpectedly, especially when issues involve potentially negative impacts on a lucrative security contract." Blackwater mercenaries acting as security guards for the U.S. State Department officials opened fire on civilian traffic on a busy Baghdad street without warning. [36] Several Iraqi and American investigations have been conducted into the incident. The Iraqi government, citing eyewitness reports, concluded that the Blackwater guards fired on . The PMC was kicked out of Iraq the next day. We are trying to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did for the Postal Service. (The mercenaries were only charged for 14 of the 17 murders.) The other three guards faced decades in prison; the weapons charges carried a minimum 30-year sentence under a law enacted during the 1990s cocaine epidemic. "The civilians that were fired upon, they didn't have any weapons to fire back at them. On that day, a bombing took place a few miles from a busy traffic circle called Al Nisour Square, which is used by Iraqis to access major roadways across Baghdad. Various employees of the PMC were also killed during the war in Iraq in their various sole to sole engagements with Iraqi insurgents. The aide also said that the Iraqi government was pushing for an apology, compensation for victims or their families and for the guards involved in the shooting to be held "accountable". RT. The following compilation of footage leaked by Harpers Magazine in 2007. The FBI also concluded that there was no evidence to support Blackwater's claims that they'd been fired upon by Iraqi civilians. Find the length and width of each section (labeled A and B here), then calculate each square footage: A: 3 ft. x 7 ft. = 21 sq. 3:48. Four former security guards for Blackwater USA were found guilty today of charges stemming from the Sept. 16, 2007, shooting at Nisur Square in Baghdad, Iraq, that resulted in the killing of 14 unarmed civilians and the wounding of numerous others. In Nisour Square, the Blackwater team later claimed that they were "engaged with small arms fire" by an "estimated 8-10 persons." 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. In events that are eerily similar to the horrific My Lai massacre of 1968, the Blackwater guards continued to fire at unarmed civilians. This is calculated by multiplying the width by the height. Here's a basic formula you can follow: Length (in feet) x width (in feet) = area in sq. The facts of the Nisour Square massacre case have been well documented and authenticated. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [15] The incident sparked at least five investigations, including one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And after the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Blackwater won a $25 million contract to provide security for L. Paul Bremer, an American diplomat who led the transitional government following the invasion. The perimeter wall to the Army Base is just east of the square. However, the vehicles had already been repaired and repainted by the time the FBI found them. [38] Waxman stated that "the controversy over Blackwater is an unfortunate demonstration of the perils of excessive reliance on private security contractors. After it was added, defense attorneys contended a 30-year sentence would be too severe, since the law was intended to deter gang members from carrying automatic weapons. [32] In response to the guards' killing of the Iraqi policeman, other Iraqi police officers began to fire at the Blackwater men, who communicated to the State Department operations center that they were under attack. [21][75] In the memorandum opinion, Judge Urbina ruled the cases against Slough, Liberty, Heard, Ball, and Slatten had been improperly built on testimony given in exchange for immunity;[76] that evidence included statements the guards had been compelled to give to State Department investigators, and as these statements would have been self-incriminating, they could not be used as evidence under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Some of the counts resulted in a mistrial, but none of the defendants got an acquittal on any count. Footage was nowhere to be found and many other things that would have justified the actions of Raven 23 after they were being fired upon by enemy forces. Moderate. NBC News reports that they repainted and repaired their trucks in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, despite the fact that the repairs "essentially destroyed evidence" that would've shown if Blackwater was facing hostile gunfire. A rocket grenade was fired into one of the cars, killing its driver. Most reports, however, state that Blackwater guards opened fire when one car didnt stop at the intersection. According to Reuters, in 2009, the State Department finally decided not to renew their contract with Blackwater in Iraq. But this was likely due to the fact that the U.S.Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, which took effect in 2009, ended contractor immunity. 'Look at That Thing': Footage Shows Pilots Spotting Unknown Object. Leaked footage of Blackwater contractors in Iraq. Former Blackwater security guard, convicted of murder in 2014 for his role in the Nisour Square massacre. However, there's never been any evidence that the Blackwater convoy took hostile fire. Blackwater Guards Sentenced To Prison For Nisour Square Slayings. [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 is the untold truth of the Blackwater massacre. They were tasked with providing security services to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia as well as a different CIA base that was at the center for the mission to capture Osama bin Laden. The Charlie Company of the US military tortured and slaughtered 504 unarmed civilians, mostly women, children, and elderly people, on March 16, 1968, in the My Lai sub-hamlet during the Vietnam War. 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