Nisour Square massacre: UN says Trump's move to pardon Blackwater men violates int'l law

• UN experts term pardon an "affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families"
• “Pardons violate US obligations under international law [...] undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level,” they observe
• US Blackwater contractors had opened fire in 2007 in traffic at a junction in Baghdad, killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians and wounding 20 others

GENEVA: UN human rights experts on Wednesday said US President Donald Trump's pardon to the four convicted Blackwater contractors involved in the killing of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians — in what later came to be known as the Nisour Square massacre — violates international law.

Terming it an "affront to justice", the UN experts said the Geneva Conventions oblige states to hold war criminals accountable for their crimes even when they act as private security contractors.

“Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” the chair of the United Nations' working group on the use of mercenaries, Jelena Aparac, said in a statement.

“These pardons violate US obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level.”

First-degree murder, manslaughter 

They warned that allowing private security contractors to “operate with impunity in armed conflicts” would embolden states to circumvent their obligations under humanitarian law.

The four contractors who worked for the private security firm Blackwater owned by the brother of Trump’s education secretary — Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard — were included in a wave of pre-Christmas pardons announced by the White House.

Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder and Slough, Liberty, and Heard of voluntary and attempted manslaughter over a 2007 incident in which the US contractors opened fire in busy traffic in a Baghdad square and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians.

'Hugely damaging'

The pardons were strongly criticised by many in the United States.

Gen David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the commander of US forces and US ambassador in Iraq, respectively, at the time of the incident, called Trump’s pardons “hugely damaging, an action that tells the world that Americans abroad can commit the most heinous crimes with impunity”.

In a statement announcing the pardons, the White House said the move was “broadly supported by the public” and backed by a number of Republican lawmakers.