Trump Pardons Four Blackwater Guards Convicted Of Massacring Iraqi Civilians, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Killing Fourteen People In A Baghdad Traffic Circle Still Carried A Penalty

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday granted full pardons to four former Blackwater security contractors convicted in the 2007 killing of unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square, resolving a long-standing concern that opening fire into a crowded traffic circle still carried legal consequences for the people who did it.

The four men, Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard, had been prosecuted for their roles in the September 16, 2007 shooting, in which guards escorting a State Department convoy fired machine guns and grenade launchers into a square full of cars and pedestrians. Fourteen Iraqi civilians were killed, among them a nine-year-old boy, and at least seventeen more were wounded. Slatten was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder; the other three were serving terms of roughly twelve to fifteen years.

The White House announcement described the men as veterans with extensive records of service and characterized their prosecution as an injustice now corrected. "These were patriots placed in an impossible situation, and the President has restored their freedom," said one official familiar with the decision, who declined to address the fourteen people whose freedom would not be restored.

Blackwater was founded by Erik Prince, a prominent Trump donor and informal adviser whose sister, Betsy DeVos, served in the President's Cabinet as Secretary of Education. United Nations human rights experts said the pardons violated U.S. obligations under international law and risked emboldening private contractors worldwide, a warning the administration received and filed. The pardons formed part of a broader clemency wave that week that also spared two former Republican congressmen and several figures convicted in the investigation into the President's 2016 campaign.

Administration sources framed the decision as a matter of basic fairness, noting that the men had already served several years and that the underlying events had taken place far away and some time ago. "At a certain point you have to let people move on," one source said, referring to the contractors rather than to the families in Baghdad, who were not consulted and learned of the pardons through the news.

At press time, the President was reviewing additional clemency applications from individuals whose primary qualification appeared to be a documented willingness to act on his behalf.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who delivered an act of clemency without Justice Department review, rewarding a politically connected private army and reinforcing that the pardon power answers to him alone.
§Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard, the four convicted contractors, freed of a life sentence for murder and manslaughter terms of twelve to fifteen years.
§Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder, a prominent Trump donor and informal adviser, whose company's signature legal liability was erased.
§Betsy DeVos and the DeVos-Prince family network, whose relative's enterprise was vindicated rather than punished while a family member sat in the Cabinet.
§The private military contracting industry, handed the precedent that conduct prosecuted in U.S. courts can be undone at the stroke of a pen.
§The theory of an unreviewable pardon power, and the officials and legal movement that depend on it.
§Future presidents, who inherit the precedent that clemency may erase convictions for killing civilians.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment