Seventeen Iraqi civilians, including 9- and 11-year-old boys, were killed when private contractors from the American security company Blackwater opened fire in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007.
Fourteen of those murders were falsely under the rules of security companies’ use of deadly force, according to an FBI investigation.
On Tuesday, Trump pardoned all four of them.
“My message to US President Trump is not to forgive or release the perpetrators, they are terrorists,” Jasim Mohammed Al-Nasrawi, a police officer injured in the attack, told Wednesday over the phone from Baghdad.
“I still haven’t recovered one hundred percent from my head wound, that one [was] sustained in gunfire by Blackwater guards in 2007 and not fully compensated for the attack. I will not waive my right in this matter, I will not give up, ”he added.
Al-Nasrawi, who attended the trial in the US as a witness, said he received damages after the verdict, but believes he owes more.
During the 2014 trial, poignant details were heard of Iraqis describing the “horror” of watching the shootings.
“Everything that moved in Nusoor Square was shot. Women, children, young people, they shot everyone,” said Hassan Jaber Salman, a lawyer who survived the attack with his son at trial.
Blackwater said his convoy was under attack, and defense attorneys said in court witness statements were fabricated. But witnesses stated that the contractors opened fire without provocation. A total of 71 witnesses testified, including 30 from Iraq – the largest group of foreign witnesses who traveled to the US for a criminal trial.
The massacre caused outrage in Iraq and raised questions about the accountability of foreign security personnel in the country, which at the time was not subject to Iraqi law by order of the US-led occupation government.
The 2014 lawsuit further spotlighted Blackwater’s shady practices, which at the time of the murders had a $ 1 billion government contract to protect US diplomats.
In more than 80 percent of the cases investigated, Blackwater reported that his troops fired first, the congressional report said.
Survivor Al-Nasrawi said on Wednesday that instead of pardoning the killers, “Trump should investigate the victims’ families and injured people and look after their health.”
In the wake of the pardon, Salman called Trump’s decision shocking, disappointing, and “violation of the victims’ rights.”
“The US legal system is known as a fair system, but it turns out that the US legal system is not fair,” he told CNN.
CNN’s Samantha Beech contributed to this report.