Iraq Insists on Blackwater Case Transfer to Int’l Courts, UN

Date: 25 December 2020 - 21:19

News ID: ۸۵۸۲۸

BAGHDAD (Sputnik) – Iraqi legislators intend to transfer to international courts and the UN the case of four former Blackwater contractors convicted of killing innocent Iraqi civilians and recently pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump for further consideration, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s Security and Defense Committee told Sputnik.
The parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee earlier demanded the government review or suspend deals concluded with the U.S. military companies over Trump’s decision to pardon four ex-Blackwater mercenaries convicted in connection with the death of 14 Iraqi civilians, including two children, in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007. The Iraqi foreign ministry also said that it plans to convince the U.S. administration to reconsider this action.
"We demand the Iraqi government transfer this file to any other international court and will bring it to the United Nations. I hope that Russia and other major countries in the Security Council will pay attention to this file, as this issue represents the international interests, not only Iraq’s ones. … Therefore, we have called on the Iraqi government and the global community to intervene in a bid to stop this farce and encroachment on democratic and human values,” Ahmad al-Asadi said.
The case has been appealed before U.S. courts over a large number of lawsuits and witnesses, the Iraqi official added, noting that all of the necessary documents on the case were filed through the U.S. embassy.
"Complaints have been lodged against the case due to a lot of claims and witnesses. We gathered in a timely manner families of the victims at the interior ministry and [then] submitted papers through the U.S. embassy. The inspector general of the interior ministry also participated as a witness and went to America three times, the witnesses and the victims’ families also were there more than two times. The American judicial authorities afterward sentenced criminals, with some of them getting imprisonment for 12 years and a life sentence,” the official said.
Trump pardoned four – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten – who were part of an armored 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 pardons are one of several the U.S. president has granted to American service personnel and contractors accused or convicted of crimes against non-combatants and civilians in war zones. In November last year, he pardoned a former U.S. army commando who was set to stand trial over the killing of an Afghan, and a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to fire at three Afghans.