Ex-Blackwater Security Contractors Sentenced to Long Prison Terms

One by one, four former Blackwater security contractors wearing blue jumpsuits and leg irons stood before a federal judge on Monday and spoke publicly for the first time since a deadly 2007 shooting in Iraq.

The men had been among several private American security guards who fired into Baghdad’s crowded Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, and last October they were convicted of killing 14 unarmed Iraqis in what prosecutors called a wartime atrocity. Yet on Monday, as they awaited sentences that they knew would send them to prison for most if not all of their lives, they defiantly asserted their innocence.

The judge, Royce C. Lamberth, strongly disagreed, sentencing Mr. Slatten to life in prison and handing 30-year sentences to the three others. A fifth former guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway of California, had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and testified against his former colleagues. He has not been sentenced but testified that he hoped to avoid any prison time.

The ruling ended a long investigation into the Nisour Square shooting, a signature, gruesome moment in the Iraq war that highlighted America’s reliance on private contractors to maintain security in combat zones.

No such company was more powerful than Blackwater, which won more than $1 billion in government contracts. Its employees, most of them military veterans, protected American diplomats overseas and became enmeshed in the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine counterterrorism operations. Its founder, Erik Prince, was a major donor to the Republican Party.

In Iraq, Blackwater was perceived as so powerful that its employees could kill anyone and get away with it, said Mohammed Hafedh Abdulrazzaq Kinani, whose 9-year-old son, Ali, was killed in Nisour Square.

“Blackwater had power like Saddam Hussein,” Mr. Kinani said in a long, emotional appeal to the judge on Monday. “The power comes from the United States.” He added later: “Today we see who will win. The law? Or Blackwater?”

Excerpt, read more here Ex-Blackwater Guards Given Long Terms for Killing Iraqis

ISIS’s Cruelty Toward Women Gets Little Attention

Tucked away in a recent New York Times story on military operations against ISIS by Iraqi special forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga was a brief description of what these troops discovered when they entered a village in Iraq that had been occupied by ISIS fighters. A naked woman, tied to a tree, who had been repeatedly raped by ISIS fighters. Another woman was discovered in a second village, similarly naked, tied down and repeatedly raped. The fighters, it appears, are “rewarded” by being allowed to have their way with captured women.

ISIS has received considerable world attention for its savage beheadings, executions of captured soldiers and men in conquered towns and villages, violence against Christians and Shiites, and the destruction of non-Sunni shrines and places of worship. But its barbarity against women has been treated as a side issue. Arab and Muslim governments, vocal on the threat ISIS poses to regional stability, have been virtually silent on ISIS’s systemic degradation, abuse, and humiliation of women. To the men of ISIS, women are an inferior race, to be enjoyed for sex and be discarded, or to be sold off as slaves.

From ISIS-captured territory in Syria, we saw a photograph of a line of women, covered from head to toe and tied to one another by a rope, as they were being led to a makeshift slave market. Little girls, who were going to school and playing with dolls before ISIS fighters arrived at their doorstep, were married off to men many times their age. ISIS set up marriage bureaus in captured Syrian towns to recruit virgins and widows to marry fighters, and also called on fellow jihadists in other countries to recruit brides for the fighters and send them to Syria. It is hardly likely that these “marriages” were based on consent, as is required in Islam. Where women are concerned, consent does not appear to exist in the lexicon of ISIS fighters.

When ISIS moved into Iraq, a similar set of atrocities followed. In ISIS-conquered towns, reports of women and girls having to undergo female genital mutilation spread like wildfire, until denied by ISIS’s savvy social media. Iraqi NGOs reported that scores of women of the Yezidi sect—an amalgam of Zoroastrianism and Islam—were taken captive. The older women were sold off as slaves and the young ones were kept as brides for the ISIS fighters. The nature of these forced marriages remains obscure.

Zakia Hakki, an Iraqi judge and a woman herself, says that the fighters leave behind pregnant women who, as “soiled goods,” are ostracized by their own societies, while their children are treated as illegitimate. These raped women become targets for honor killings in their own families and communities. The governments of Iraq and Syria have also failed to protect these women and give them any assistance; nor have Western NGOs been effective in looking after these abandoned women and children. ISIS’s men not only leave behind dead bodies in their wake but also women and children who are scarred for life.

In its propaganda, ISIS emphasizes women’s modesty and piety. It created the al-Khansaa female brigade to protect the morality of women and to ensure they appear totally veiled in public. The irony will not be lost on anyone.

Volunteer fighters from around the world, including from Western countries, who have joined ISIS are complicit in these crimes against women. These young men who grew up in Western cultures seem to have absorbed nothing regarding the value of human life and respect for women. Why are there are no demonstrations in Western and Muslim societies against this barbaric onslaught on women and girls? How much longer will the Muslim and Arab world watch these horrors against women and children before speaking out and acting forcefully to protect them and rid the region of the ISIS calamity?

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Haleh Esfandiari directs the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She was held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison in Tehran for 105 days in 2007. This article was originally posted in the Washington Post. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

Obama Authorizes Humanitarian Drops and Limited Airstrikes in Iraq

[Click image to be redirected to a video of Obama's speech.]

President Barack Obama said he authorized airstrikes against militants in Iraq if they threaten U.S. personnel, and he dispatched planes to drop food and water for trapped civilians threatened with “genocide.”

U.S. aircraft dropped supplies today to Iraqis threatened by fighters from the Islamic State extremist group near Sinjar, close to the border of Syria. All the planes safely left the airspace.

The airlift was precipitated by the plight of about 50,000 people, half of them children, who have been stranded in mountainous territory after advances by the militant Islamic State. The people are Yezidis, an ethno-religious minority. The militants have also targeted Christians, Obama said.

The extremists “have called for the systematic destruction of the entire Yezidis people, which would constitute a genocide,” Obama said tonight in televised remarks from the White House. “The United States of America cannot turn a blind eye.”

Obama, who campaigned for office on a vow to end the Iraq war, and oversaw the full withdrawal of forces from Iraq in 2011, said the U.S. has no intention of putting forces on the ground. He said he authorized airstrikes against Islamic State militants if they move toward the Kurdish city of Erbil, where the U.S. has diplomatic personnel.

Excerpt, read more here.

No One Is Safe: Abuses of Women in Iraq’s Criminal Justice System

(Baghdad) – Iraqi authorities are detaining thousands of Iraqi women illegally and subjecting many to torture and ill-treatment, including the threat of sexual abuse. Iraq’s weak judiciary, plagued by corruption, frequently bases convictions on coerced confessions, and trial proceedings fall far short of international standards. Many women were detained for months or even years without charge before seeing a judge.

The 105-page report, “‘No One Is Safe’: Abuses of Women in Iraq’s Criminal Justice System,” documents abuses of women in detention based on interviews with women and girls, Sunni and Shia, in prison; their families and lawyers; and medical service providers in the prisons at a time of escalating violence involving security forces and armed groups. Human Rights Watch also reviewed court documents and extensive information received in meetings with Iraqi authorities including Justice, Interior, Defense, and Human Rights ministry officials, and two deputy prime ministers.

“Iraqi security forces and officials act as if brutally abusing women will make the country safer,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “In fact, these women and their relatives have told us that as long as security forces abuse people with impunity, we can only expect security conditions to worsen.” In January 2013, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki promised to reform the criminal justice system, beginning with releasing detained women who had judicial orders of release. A year later, the brutal tactics of security forces remain essentially the same and hundreds of women remain in detention illegally.

Excerpt, read more at Human Rights Watch

Status of Forces: Liability in Iraq

A Status of Forces Agreement (SFA) between the U.S. and Iraqi governments has received recent attention in the press. The agreement specifically details liability for crimes committed by private military companies and U.S. military personnel in Iraq. Unfortunately, the text of the agreement is unavailable, and online sources provide few details about provisions of the agreement. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino stated in a press briefing on October 17, 2008, that she could not provide details on the jurisdictional issue, i.e., whether Iraqi courts will be able to try U.S. military personnel for abuses committed in Iraq.

A New York Times article notes that “the agreement would make private American security companies and other contractors subject to Iraqi justice in criminal cases.” This drastically alters Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Order 17, which provided immunity to foreign contractors from prosecution under Iraqi law. Despite calls to respect Iraqi law, CPA Order 17 concluded that “[c]ontractors [should] be immune from Iraqi legal process with respect to acts performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a Contract or any sub-contract thereto.”

Unlike private military companies, U.S. military personnel retain immunity from Iraqi law unless thy engage in “serious or premeditated felonies . . . outside of their official duties.” A CNN article further notes that these individuals retain immunity as long as their actions occur inside U.S. facilities. Another provision in the SFA would establish a committee to review suspected crimes of U.S. military personnel and grant that committee the discretion to refer these matters to Iraqi courts, according to a New York Times article.

The SFA does not appear to address civil liability for private military companies. Private military companies are business entities, and business entities are often the most vulnerable to monetary sanctions in civil suits. The enforcement of criminal liability – and not civil liability – might result in criminal convictions of individual contractors, while private military companies face no sanction. With regard to U.S. military personnel, a number of questions arise. First, who will fall within the classification of “U.S. military personnel”? Second, what conduct will constitute “serious or premeditated felonies”? Third, what conduct will be considered on-duty or off-duty conduct? Fourth, who will compose the committee charged with referring matters to the Iraqi courts and what level of discretion will this committee have? This provision could quickly lose any force depending on how these terms are defined.

Historically, the U.S. government has prevented the Iraqi justice system from ensuring accountability and failed to prosecute wrongdoers within the United States. The U.S. government has taken advantage of the military services provided by private military companies. These companies act at the behest of the U.S. government, yet they are not affiliated with the government and are often composed of individuals who are not U.S. citizens. The U.S. government is thereby able to contract away liability for military action in Iraq. Although the SFA presents the opportunity for accountability, the terms of the agreement could result in more of the same.