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
Israeli strike killed 36 Syrian soldiers near Aleppo: war monitor
- Syrian state media SANA, quoting a military official, also reported that the airstrike inflicted casualties
- The strike targetted an area near Hezbollah rocket depots, says Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on northern Syria’s Aleppo province killed at least 36 Syrian soldiers on Friday, according to a war monitor.
The attack killed at least “36 Syrian soldiers” and targeted an area “near rockets depots belonging to Lebanese group Hezbollah,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, which has an extensive network of sources in Syria.
Syrian state news agency SANA said the pre-dawn strike killed and wounded civilians as well as military personnel.
A Syrian military source told SANA that “at approximately 1:45 a.m., the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo,” adding that “civilians and military personnel” had been killed and wounded in the strike.
The Britain-based SOHR, an opposition war monitor, said Hezbollah missile depots targetted in the strikes were in Aleppo’s southern suburb of Jibreen near the Aleppo International Airport.
The Observatory said explosions were still heard two hours after the strikes.
There was no immediate statement from Israeli officials on the strikes. Israel frequently launches strikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria but rarely acknowledges them.
On Thursday, Syrian state media reported airstrikes near the capital Damascus saying it wounded two civilians.
Hezbollah has had an armed presence in Syria since it joined the country’s conflict fighting alongside government forces.
Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once its commercial center, has come under such attacks in the past that led to the closure of its international airport. Friday’s strike did not affect the airport.
The strikes have escalated over the past five months against the backdrop of the war in Gaza and ongoing clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border.
Israel has not received everything it has asked for, top US general says
- Some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration’s steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity
WASHINGTON: The United States’ top general said on Thursday that Israel had not received every weapon it has asked for, in part because some of it could affect the US military’s readiness and there were capacity limitations.
Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally. The United States has been rushing air defenses and munitions to Israel, but some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration’s steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity.
“Although we’ve been supporting them with capability, they’ve not received everything they’ve asked for,” said General Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Some of that is because they’ve asked for stuff that we either don’t have the capacity to provide or not willing to provide, not right now,” Brown added, while speaking at an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group.
A spokesperson for Brown later on Thursday said his comments were in reference to “a standard practice before providing military aid to any of our allies and partners.”
“We assess US stockpiles and any possible impact on our own readiness to determine our ability to provide the requested aid,” Navy Captain Jereal Dorsey said in a statement.
“There is no change in US policy. The United States continues to provide security assistance to our ally Israel as they defend themselves from Hamas,” Dorsey added.
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israel’s devastating offensive, according to health authorities in the territory.
Israel retaliated following an attack by militant group Hamas on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
The Israeli offensive prompted opposition from within Biden’s Democratic Party, leading thousands to vote “uncommitted” for him in recent party presidential primaries.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington earlier this week and the Pentagon said security assistance to Israel was discussed.
“It is a constant dialogue,” Brown said.
Arab News Research and Studies Unit launches latest deep dive on Jerusalem
- Focus on Israel’s land appropriations with settler organizations, marginalization of Christians and Muslims
- Arab News provides details of aim to ‘Judaize’ Palestinian East Jerusalem
LONDON: For the past 20 years Israel’s government has collaborated with the country’s leading settler movement in a plot to appropriate land in East Jerusalem, with the aim of reestablishing the Biblical “City of David,” at the cost of Muslims and Christians alike, and sabotaging any hope of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The wealthy City of David Foundation, also known as Elad, has also been given virtual carte blanche by various government departments to develop biblically themed national parks surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City.
It has also embarked on a series of controversial archaeological projects designed to provide evidence that East Jerusalem is the site of the City of David, as mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
“What we are seeing is the establishment of a very specific, exclusionary, absolutist biblical narrative in and around the Old City, and the etching of that narrative physically into the landscape through archaeology, parks, and so on,” said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem. This is an Israeli NGO that works to track developments in Jerusalem that could impact either the political process or permanent-status options.
The aim was “the marginalization of Palestinian East Jerusalem, politically, geographically and economically, and the marginalization of the Christian presence in Jerusalem.”
Normally, the Christian presence in Jerusalem is never more apparent than during Holy Week, which began on Sunday — Palm Sunday in the Christian calendar — and culminates on Easter Sunday, March 31. Today is Good Friday, when Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Christ, which they believe took place at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City’s Christian quarter.
VIEW THE DEEP DIVE
Battleground: Jerusalem The biblical battle for the Holy City
But presiding over the celebrations at the church on Palm Sunday , Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, expressed his dismay that many parishioners and pilgrims had been unable to participate this year because of the war in Gaza, “which is so terrible and seems never-ending ... and everything going on around us this year.”
The details of what Terrestrial Jerusalem describes as “the strategic encirclement of Jerusalem’s Old City” are revealed today in a special Deep Dive by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit.
The plot has been a long time in the planning. Speaking in June 1998 after Jewish settlers seized four homes in Silwan, Elad spokesman Yigal Kaufman said: “Our aim is to Judaize East Jerusalem. The City of David is the most ancient core of Jerusalem, and we want it to become a Jewish neighborhood.”
Last week Israel dealt a fresh blow to hopes of Palestinian statehood when it announced it was seizing 800 hectares of occupied Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley, a move condemned as illegal by numerous states and institutions from the European Union to the Arab League’s parliament.
The announcement, by Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, was made last Friday as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv for talks on Gaza with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jordanian, Irish foreign ministers discuss Gaza war in phone call
- The two ministers discussed the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
- Safadi thanked Martin for his country's position on ceasefire and need for aid
AMMAN: Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi received a phone call from the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin on Thursday, Jordan News Agency reported.
The two ministers discussed the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the prompt delivery of sufficient, sustainable aid to the enclave.
They also stressed the significance of implementing Security Council Resolution No. 2728, adopted on Tuesday, which called for a ceasefire during Ramadan.
Israel bombed at least four homes in Rafah on Wednesday, raising new fears of a long-threatened ground assault.
Safadi highlighted the necessity of upholding international law and humanitarian principles.
Talks also touched upon ongoing efforts to halt Israel’s offensive and address the resulting humanitarian crisis.
Both ministers reiterated their commitment to continued collaboration and joint efforts to facilitate aid into Gaza.
Safadi emphasized the importance of Ireland and other European nations officially recognizing the Palestinian state. He thanked Martin for his country's position on a ceasefire and need for aid, as well as its backing of the two-state solution.
Israel has laid siege to Gaza since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, cutting off food, fuel, water, and power supplies.
Judges at the International Court of Justice on Thursday unanimously ordered Israel to take all necessary action to ensure basic food supplies arrived without delay to the Palestinian population.
On Wednesday, Martin announced the Irish government would intervene in the case brought by South Africa, arguing that the restriction of essential goods in Gaza may constitute genocidal intent.
Shoukry reiterates Egypt’s objection to Rafah ground offensive in phone call with British FM
- Shoukry emphasized to Cameron that Egypt rejects any ground military operation in the Palestinian city of Rafah
- He warned of its grave humanitarian repercussions and its potential security impacts on the region’s stability
CAIRO: Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip in a phone call.
Shoukry received Cameron’s call within the framework of consultation and coordination about the situation in the Gaza Strip and the necessary action to end the humanitarian crisis there.
The two sides exchanged assessments on the dire humanitarian and security conditions in the Gaza Strip and the regional and international action needed to achieve a ceasefire, swap detainees and deliver humanitarian aid in full to the Strip.
They stressed the necessity of ensuring the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2728 and building on it to reach a full and sustainable ceasefire.
The discussion addressed means of coordination between international and regional parties to halt the war in the Gaza Strip.
Shoukry affirmed that Egypt was continuing its efforts at all levels to facilitate reaching an agreement to enforce the truce in Gaza, leading to a permanent ceasefire in the Strip for the preservation of the lives of Palestinian civilians.
Shoukry assured his British counterpart of Egypt’s rejection of any ground military operation in the Palestinian city of Rafah, warning of its grave humanitarian repercussions and its potential security impacts on the region’s stability.
He also stressed the necessity of putting an end to Israeli policies and practices attempting to create an uninhabitable situation in the Gaza Strip, including indiscriminate targeting, starvation and collective punishment against Palestinian civilians.
Shoukry reiterated the rejection of the forced displacement of Palestinians outside their territories and any attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Shoukry and Cameron agreed to continue consultations during the coming period on the path toward curbing the crisis in the Gaza Strip and containing its repercussions.