Face of an unrepentent American butcher of Iraqi civilians. Photo credit to Al Jazeera
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press news agency, his first since being released from the prison, Evan Shawn Liberty said “I feel like I acted correctly” during the deadly shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.
Liberty and three other former Blackwater employees – Nicholas Slatten, Paul Alvin Slough, and Dustin Laurent Heard – were convicted for their roles in the massacre after a protracted, years-long legal process in the US.
“I regret any innocent loss of life, but I’m just confident in how I acted and I can basically feel peace with that,” Liberty told AP.
The case sparked renewed criticism of the use of US contractors in conflict zones and Trump’s December 22 pardon of the four men has drawn widespread criticism from human rights advocates, lawyers and others in the US and Iraq.
US prosecutors have long maintained that the Blackwater employees, who were contracted by the US State Department in Iraq, launched an unprovoked attack on civilians involving sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers.
In a New York Times letter to the editor published on Friday, John Patarinithe, the FBI agent who led the investigation into the incident, said he “spent many hours with the innocent Iraqi victims who are permanently maimed and crippled because of the actions of these Blackwater guards, and the heartbroken family members of those killed”.
“I am embarrassed for our country,” he wrote. “I believe we will pay a heavy price in our relationships with other countries as a result of these pardons.”
For their part, the convicted contractors have said they were acting in self-defence and their lawyers have said the shooting began only after a white sedan broke from traffic and approached the convoy in what appeared to be a threatening way.
The sedan actually held a medical student and his mother.
Prosecutors have said one of the former contractors, Slatten, “was the first to fire, without provocation”. He was sentenced in 2019 to life in prison without parole for the murder of Ahmed Haithem Ahmed al-Rubia’y, the medical student who was driving his mother to an appointment. Al Jazeera
4 hired American killers, conveniently called contractors, contract to kill, gunned down innocent Iraqi civilians and lying in court that they were killing them in self defence. Can anyone believe in this white lie?
Think of how many levels of command were involved in making this order to kill Iraqi civilians. Was Trump involved in the decision making that he had to pardon these murderers of Arabs? And to think that these hired killers got the cheek to claim that they fired in self defence and feeling good about it, not a trace or remorse and repentence, and the racist American President Trump pardoned them. And this is the evil country that shout for human rights and freedom!
Do the Iraqi civilians have any human rights, and freedom to move around freely in the streets of Baghdad and not be killed in broad daylight by American hired killers? Or to theAmericans the Iraqis/Arabs are subhuman beans, free to be killed at will by the white Americans, and no crime committed when the white American President set them free?
How evil can the white Americans be? Look at the face of the murderer, butcher above? His face said he did not care a damn about the innocent lives he took. He could sleep peacefully, no sense of guilt, no wrongs?
And no condemnation from the supposedly 'morally high' western media and the worshipers and believers of the white evil American Empire.
The most dangerous mad man that may use nuclear weapons on other countries have been restrained. His power to order a nuclear strike has been taken away.
ReplyDeleteThe mad man is the one that called North Korea Kim dangerous when Kim is just a child, has no reason to want to strike any country. Only silly people are still parroting this American mischievous myth that Kim is a threat to the world.
The threat to the world is the Americans and the mad man is the President of the USA, Donald Trump.