Seventeen Iraqi civilians, including 9- and 11-year-old boys, were killed when they hired private contractors from US security firm Blackwater in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007.
According to an FBI investigation, fourteen of these killings were unjustified under the rules of use of deadly force by security contractors.
On Tuesday, Trump pardoned all four.
“My message to US President Trump is not to forgive or release the perpetrators, they are terrorists,” Jasim Mohammed Al-Nasrawi, a police officer who was injured, told CNN on Wednesday by telephone from Baghdad.
“I am still not fully recovered from my head injury [was] received in the shots by the black water guards in 2007, and have not been fully compensated for the attack. I will not give up my right to this case, I will not give up, “he added.
Al-Nasrawi, who attended the trial in the United States as a witness, said he had received some compensation after the sentencing, but believes more is owed to him.
The 2014 trial heard deterrent details from Iraqis describing the “horror” of seeing the shootings unfold.
“Everything that moved in Nusoor Square was shot. Women, children, young people, shot everyone,” said Hassan Jaber Salman, a lawyer who survived the attack with his son, during the trial.
Blackwater said his convoy was attacked and defense attorneys told the court that eyewitness accounts were invented. But witnesses testified that the contractors opened fire without provocation. A total of seventy-one witnesses testified, including 30 from Iraq, the largest group of foreign witnesses who traveled to the United States to conduct a criminal trial.
The massacre sparked outrage in Iraq and raised questions about the responsibility of foreign security personnel in the country, which was not subject to Iraqi law under an order of the U.S.-led occupation government at the time.
The 2014 trial further affected Blackwater’s murky practices, which at the time of the assassinations had a $ 1 billion government contract to protect U.S. diplomats.
In more than 80% of the cases examined, Blackwater reported that its forces fired first, according to the Congressional report.
Survivor Al-Nasrawi said Wednesday that instead of issuing pardons to the killers, “Trump should look at the families and wounded of the victims and take care of their health.”
Following the pardons, Salman called Trump’s decision shocking, disappointing and “abusive to the rights of the victims.”
“It is known that the American justice system is a fair system, but it turns out that the American justice system is not fair,” he told CNN.
CNN’s Samantha Beech contributed to this report.