BAGHDAD: Iraqis on Wednesday were outraged, heartbroken but not surprised to hear US President Donald Trump had pardoned for four Blackwater contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007.
“I lost hope a long time ago,” said Fares Saadi, the Iraqi police officer who led the investigations into the shootings at Baghdad’s crowded Nisur Square.
The Blackwater team, contracted to provide security for US diplomats in Iraq following the American-led invasion in 2003, claimed they were responding to insurgent fire.
The bloody episode left at least 14 Iraqi civilians dead and 17 wounded, many of whom Saadi remembered taking to the hospital himself.
“Thirteen years, you said? My God. I remember it like it was yesterday,” he told AFP by telephone in Baghdad.
“It was random fire, 360 degrees. I picked up people, drove them to the hospital, took statements,” he said.
Saadi was the lead Iraqi police investigator into the incident, coordinating with FBI teams sent to Baghdad and even providing witness testimony in US trials.
Three of the guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were initially convicted of manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and a firearm offense, and sentenced to 30 years each.
A fourth, Nicholas Slatten, was determined to have fired the first shots and was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Slatten was retried and sentenced in August 2019 to life in prison. The following month, Slough, Liberty and Heard had their sentences reduced by half or more.
“I was following carefully the whole time. It was a gradual reduction — I knew we’d never get justice,” Saadi said.
Iraq’s foreign ministry said Wednesday it would ask Washington to “review the decision,” which it described as “inconsistent with the US administration’s declared commitment to the values of human rights, justice and the rule of law.”
Kataeb Hezbollah, a hard-line Iraqi armed group backed by Iran, said the US was “deluding itself into thinking our people would forget these crimes.”
The pardon came just a few weeks after the International Criminal Court shut down a preliminary probe into alleged war crimes by British troops in Iraq after the invasion.
The ICC prosecutor had said in 2017 that there was “reasonable basis” for believing British soldiers had committed such crimes.
But she said this month she could not find proof Britain had shielded suspects from prosecution.
Ali Bayati of Iraq’s Human Rights Commission said the back-to-back decisions showed there was little respect for human rights abroad.
“The latest decision confirms these countries’ violations of human rights and international law,” he told AFP.
“They grant immunity to their soldiers even as they claim to protect human rights.”
Baghdad was gripped by bloody sectarian warfare in 2007, and there was no local trial over the September 16 deaths in Nisur Square.
Following the shootings, Iraq announced it would not renew Blackwater’s operating license and the US State Department did not renew its contract there with the firm.
Blackwater changed its name several times, eventually becoming Academi and merging with other firms to form the Constellis Group.
One of Constellis’s smaller firms, Olive Group, is currently operating in Iraq.
“It was a charade of a trial, then they get released and it’s all over,” said Mohammed Al-Shahmani, a Baghdad resident.
“The US president just proved that they occupied this country, not liberated it.”
The US trial found none of the 14 people killed in Nisur Square was armed. Many were in their vehicles, which had been sprayed with machine-gun fire.
At least one child died.
All but one of the victims’ families accepted compensation from Blackwater, a lawyer wounded in the attack told AFP previously.
Those hurt received up to $50,000, while the relatives of those killed were offered $100,000.
Haitham Al-Rubaie, who lost his son Ahmad and wife Mahasin, was the only one to turn down the offers.
Ahmad was a 20-year-old medical student, a former classmate said on Wednesday.
“All of us at school were devastated and heartbroken,” said the classmate, who asked for her name to be withheld so she could speak freely.
“Times were really tough... and to hear that he and his mom were both murdered added to our sense of desperation.”
She said she expected Ahmad would have been a successful physician — like his mother — had he lived.
“It is an utter outrage, but it is also not surprising by any means. The Americans have never approached us Iraqis as equals,” the former classmate said.
“As far as they are concerned, our blood is cheaper than water and our demands for justice and accountability are merely a nuisance.”
‘Cheaper than water’: Iraqis angry but unsurprised over Blackwater pardons
https://arab.news/zjtqt
‘Cheaper than water’: Iraqis angry but unsurprised over Blackwater pardons
- The Blackwater team, contracted to provide security for US diplomats in Iraq following the American-led invasion in 2003, claimed they were responding to insurgent fire
- The bloody episode left at least 14 Iraqi civilians dead and 17 wounded
Qataris search for bodies of Americans killed by Daesh in Syria
- Search mission discussed in Qatari trip to US, source says
- Daesh beheaded a number of Western hostages
- Qatari mission begins before Trump visit to Doha
A Qatari mission has begun searching for the remains of US hostages killed by Daesh in Syria a decade ago, two sources briefed on the mission said, reviving a longstanding effort to recover their bodies.
Daesh, which controlled swathes of Syria and Iraq at the peak of its power from 2014-2017, beheaded numerous people in captivity, including Western hostages, and released videos of the killings.
Qatar’s international search and rescue group began the search on Wednesday, accompanied by several Americans, the sources said. The group, deployed by Doha to earthquake zones in Morocco and Turkiye in recent years, had so far found the remains of three bodies, the sources said.
One of the sources — a Syrian security source — said the remains had yet to be identified. The second source said it was unclear how long the mission would last.
The US State Department had no immediate comment.
The Qatari mission gets under way as US President Donald Trump prepares to visit Doha and other Gulf Arab allies next week and as Syria’s ruling Islamists, close allies of Qatar, seek relief from US sanctions.
The Syrian source said the mission’s initial focus was on looking for the body of aid worker Peter Kassig, who was beheaded by Daesh in 2014 in Dabiq in northern Syria. The second source said Kassig’s remains were among those they hoped to find.
US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were among other Western hostages killed by Daesh. Their deaths were confirmed in 2014.
US aid worker Kayla Mueller was also killed in Daesh captivity. She was raped repeatedly by Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi before her death, US officials have said. Her death was confirmed in 2015.
“We’re grateful for anyone taking on this task and risking their lives in some circumstances to try and find the bodies of Jim and the other hostages,” said Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother. “We thank all those involved in this effort.”
The families of the other hostages, contacted via the Committee to Protect Journalists, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The extremists were eventually driven out of their self-declared caliphate by a US-led coalition and other forces.
APRIL VISIT
Plans for the Qatari mission were discussed during a visit to Washington in April by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and the Minister of State for the foreign ministry, Mohammed Al Khulaifi — a trip also designed to prepare for Trump’s visit to Qatar, one of the sources said.
Another person familiar with the issue said there had been a longstanding commitment by successive US administrations to find the remains of the murdered Americans, and that there had been multiple previous “efforts with US government officials on the ground in Syria to search very specific areas.”
The person did not elaborate. But the US has had hundreds of troops deployed in northeastern Syria that have continued pursuing the remnants of Daesh.
The person said the remains of Kassig, Sotloff and Foley were most likely in the same general area, and that Dabiq had been one of Daesh’s “centerpieces” — a reference to its propaganda value as a place named in an Islamic prophecy.
Mueller’s case differed in that she was in Baghdadi’s custody, the person said.
Two Daesh members, both former British citizens who were part of a cell that beheaded American hostages, are serving life prison sentences in the United States.
Syrian interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who seized power from Bashar Assad in December, battled Daesh when he was the commander of another jihadist faction — the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front — during the Syrian war.
Sharaa severed ties to Al-Qaeda in 2016.
33 killed in Sudan strikes blamed on paramilitary RSF
PORT SUDAN: At least 33 people have been killed in Sudan in attacks blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, at war with the army since April 2023, first responders said Saturday.
The attacks came after six straight days of RSF drone strikes on the army-led government’s wartime capital Port Sudan damaged key infrastructure including the power grid.
On Friday evening, at least 14 members of the same family were killed in an air strike on a displacement camp in the vast western region of Darfur, a rescue group said, blaming the paramilitaries.
The Abu Shouk camp “was the target of intense bombardment by the Rapid Support Forces on Friday evening,” said the group of volunteer aid workers, which also reported wounded.
“Fourteen Sudanese, members of the same family, were killed” and several people wounded, it said in a statement.
The camp near El-Fasher, the last state capital in Darfur still out of the RSF’s control, is plagued by famine, according to the United Nations.
It is home to tens of thousands of people who fled the violence of successive conflicts in Darfur and the conflict that has been tearing Africa’s third largest country apart since 2023.
The RSF has shelled the camp several times in recent weeks.
Abu Shouk is located near the Zamzam camp, which the RSF seized in April after a devastating offensive that virtually emptied it.
The United Nations says nearly one million people had been sheltering at the site.
On Saturday, an RSF strike on a prison in the army-controlled southern city of El-Obeid killed at least 19 people and wounded 45, a medical source said.
The source told AFP that the jail in the North Kordofan state capital was hit by a RSF drone.
The war, which began as a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has spiralled into what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
It has effectively divided the country in two with the army controlling the north, east and center while the RSF and its allies dominate nearly all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south.
UN’s top anti-racism body calls for immediate Gaza aid access
- Civilian population ‘at imminent risk of famine, disease and death,’ statement warns
- Israel has blocked humanitarian aid entering Gaza since March in bid to ‘pressurize Hamas’
NEW YORK CITY: The UN’s top anti-racism body has called for immediate humanitarian access to Gaza in a bid to avoid “catastrophic consequences” for its civilian population.
The statement by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — comprised of independent experts — came hours after the World Central Kitchen charity said it was forced to end operations in Gaza due to a lack of food.
It also follows a commitment by Israel to “conquer” almost all of the enclave, as well as disputes involving Israel, the UN and US over the appropriate way to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians there.
The CERD committee is convening in Geneva for its latest session, ending today.
Gaza’s civilian population, “especially vulnerable groups such as children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities,” are “at imminent risk of famine, disease and death,” the committee said.
The warning follows an earlier appeal by the World Food Programme, the UN’s food agency, which said that almost all food aid operations in Gaza had collapsed.
Late last month, the agency announced that the entirety of its food reserves in the enclave had been depleted.
Since March, Israel has blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza in a bid to build pressure on Hamas, which still holds Israeli hostages.
Tom Fletcher, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, said last week: “Two months ago, the Israeli authorities took a deliberate decision to block all aid to Gaza and halt our efforts to save survivors of their military offensive.
“They have been bracingly honest that this policy is to pressurize Hamas.”
Expanded military operations by Israel in Gaza over the past two months “have dramatically worsened the humanitarian crisis and severely endangered the civilian population,” Friday’s CERD statement said.
The committee called on Israel to “lift all barriers to humanitarian access, allow the immediate and unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid, and cease all actions obstructing the provision of essential services to the civilian population in Gaza.”
The statement also highlighted worsening conditions across the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including in East Jerusalem, where Israel closed six UNRWA schools this week.
Philippe Lazzarini, the Palestinian refugee agency’s chief, reacted with fury over the move, describing it as an “assault on children.”
The CERD statement called on all UN states to “cooperate to bring an end to the violations that are taking place and to prevent war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, including by ceasing any military assistance.”
UN committee warns of ‘another Nakba’ in Palestinian territories
- During the 1948 war, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became known as “the Nakba”
GENEVA: The world could be witnessing “another Nakba” expulsion of Palestinians, a United Nations committee warned Friday, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and saying it was inflicting “unimaginable suffering” on Palestinians.
For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the “Nakba,” or catastrophe — the mass displacement in the war that accompanied to Israel’s creation in 1948.
“Israel continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on the people living under its occupation, whilst rapidly expanding confiscation of land as part of its wider colonial aspirations,” warned a UN committee tasked with probing Israeli practices affecting Palestinian rights.
“What we are witnessing could very well be another Nakba,” it said, after concluding an annual mission to Amman.
During the 1948 war, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became known as “the Nakba.”
The descendants of some 160,000 Palestinians who managed to remain in what became Israel presently make about 20 percent of its population.
The UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1968.
The committee is currently composed of the Sri Lankan, Malaysian and Senegalese ambassadors to the UN in New York.
“What the world is witnessing could very well be a second Nakba. The goal of wider colonial expansion is clearly the priority of the government of Israel,” they said in their report.
“Security operations are used as a smokescreen for rapid land grabbing, mass displacement, dispossession, demolitions, forced evictions and ethnic cleansing, in order to replace the Palestinian communities with Jewish settlers.”
Iran, US to resume nuclear talks on Sunday after postponement
- Fourth round of indirect negotiations, initially set for May 3 in Rome, postponed due to ‘logistical reasons’
DUBAI: Iran has agreed to hold a fourth round of nuclear talks with the United States on Sunday in Oman, Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said on Friday, adding that the negotiations were advancing.
US President Donald Trump, who withdrew Washington from a 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers meant to curb its nuclear activity, has threatened to bomb Iran if no new deal is reached to resolve the long unresolved dispute.
Western countries say Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran accelerated after the US walkout from the now moribund 2015 accord, is geared toward producing weapons, whereas Iran insists it is purely for civilian purposes.
“The negotiations are moving forward, and naturally, the further we go, the more consultations and reviews are needed,” Aragchi said in remarks carried by Iranian state media.
“The delegations require more time to examine the issues that are raised. But what is important is that we are on a forward-moving path and gradually entering into the details.”
The fourth round of indirect negotiations, initially scheduled for May 3 in Rome, was postponed, with mediator Oman citing “logistical reasons.”
Aragchi said a planned visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia on Saturday was in line with “continuous consultations” with neighboring countries to “address their concerns and mutual interests” about the nuclear issue.
