It is not uncommon for U.S. presidents to pardon unsavory characters.
It is uncommon for them to pardon murderers.
No previous recent president has pardoned a murderer.
Or mass murderers.
Until Donald Trump.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/war-crimes-pardons-trump/index.html
President Trump Michael Behenna was convicted of murdering an Iraqi prison of war in 2009.
SEE Michael Behenna.
Trump also pardoned convicted mass murderers who killed unarmed citizens in Iraq during an unprovoked attack and were convicted by a jury and sentenced by a federal judge in a U.S. courtroom.
On September 16, 2007, guards working for Blackwater Worldwide, a private military contractor, fired machines guns and grenades into a crowd of unarmed Iraqi citizens in a Baghdad traffic circle, killing 14 and injuring 17.
The unprovoked attack has been called “one of the most ignominious chapters of the Iraq war.” None of the victims was “an insurgent,” the Washington Post reported.
Seven years later, a federal jury in Washington convicted four Blackwater guards of charges including murder, manslaughter and gun charges, in a trial that lasted nearly three months.
Prosecutors argued that the “defendants fired recklessly and out of control in a botched security operation after one of them falsely claimed to believe the driver of an approaching vehicle was a car bomber. Jurors rejected the guards’ claims that they were acting in self-defense and were the target of incoming AK-47 gunfire,” the Washington Post reported.
Iraqi investigators said a videotape confirmed that the guards fired without provocation, Fox News reported.
The jury convicted Nicholas A. Slatten, 30, of Sparta, Tenn., of murder; Paul A. Slough, 35, of Keller, Tex., of 13 counts of manslaughter and 17 counts of attempted manslaughter; Evan S. Liberty, 32, of Rochester, N.H., of eight counts of manslaughter and 12 counts of attempted manslaughter; and Dustin Heard, 33, of Knoxville, Tenn., of six counts of manslaughter and 11 counts of attempted manslaughter.
Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced Slatten to life in prison; Heard to 12 years and seven months; Liberty to 14 years; and Slough to 15 years.
Blackwater, a private military contractor, was founded in 1996 by former Navy Seal officer Eric Prince, the former of Betsy De Vos, who served as secretary of education in the President Donald Trump administration.
On December 2020, President Trump, shortly before leaving office, pardoned the four Blackwater guards.
Hassan Salman, who was among the Iraqis injured in attack, told NPR that he was shocked by the pardon.
“Today we were surprised that the American president issued a decision to pardon these criminals, murderers and thugs,” Salman said. “I’m really shocked. . . . The American judiciary is fair and equitable. I had never imagined that Trump or any other politician would affect American justice.”
In addition, the U.N. Human Rights Office said it was “deeply concerned” by the pardons.
“These four individuals were given sentences ranging from 12 years to life imprisonment, including on charges of first-degree murder,” spokesperson Marta Hurtado said in a statement. “Pardoning them contributes to impunity and has the effect of emboldening others to commit such crimes in the future.”
Robert Ford, a U.S. diplomat who worked for five years in Iraq over five years, met with the widows and other relatives of the victims after the killings, expressed dismay over the pardons.
“It was one of the very worst occasions I can remember in my time” in Iraq, said Ford, who teaches at Yale University. “That was just horrible. We had killed these people’s relatives and they were still terribly grieving.”
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-baghdad-shootings-iraq-585f413732fa953d0a9a7f4c3cf77ac5
