Search Results for: blackwater

“So far from it being unjust to punish him, it would be unjust if his wrongs were allowed to go unpunished.” Nuremberg Tribunal (1946) At the beginning of 2024, former President Donald J. Trump’s most conspicuously unsupportable legal claim has been his personal immunity from criminal prosecution. With this claim, Mr. Trump and his lead [...]

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In jurisprudential matters, whether national or international, precedent remains vitally important. When former (and possibly future) US President Donald J. Trump issued illegal pardons to selected American officials for established crimes against international law, the consequences reverberated in other countries. Now, with still-mounting Russian crimes against Ukraine –  crimes of war; crimes against peace; and crimes [...]

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“States shall not take….any measures which may be prejudicial to the international obligations they have assumed in regard to the detection, arrest, extradition and punishment of persons guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” – Principles of International Cooperation, General Assembly Resolution, 1973 “It’s not surprising that a criminal like Trump pardons other criminals, [...]

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As usual, Trump doesn’t see the link between his Blackwater pardons and potential retaliation on Soleimani’s death anniversary. US President Trump does not understand foreign policy. As usual, he cannot fathom the links between his at-first-sight isolated decisions and the larger US foreign policy and security picture. Look no further than his recent Blackwater pardons [...]

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UN rights experts attached to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Wednesday condemned President Trump’s December 22 pardoning of four former Blackwater contractors, asserting that the pardons violated international law. The Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries, Jelena Aparac, called the pardons an “affront to justice to the [...]

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“Cheaper than water.” This is how Iraqis commented on the value of their lives after they learned that US President Donald Trump had pardoned the four Blackwater security contractors who had previously been sentenced over the death of 17 Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisur Square massacre. Sentences included life imprisonment for a first-degree murder. A child [...]

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The United Nations Human Rights Office Wednesday criticized President Trump for pardoning former Blackwater contractors who were jailed in the US for killing 14 Iraqi civilians. On Tuesday, Trump granted full pardons to the former Blackwater contractors. The contractors had been previously sentenced to life imprisonment in August 2019 for the murders that took place [...]

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US President Donald Trump granted Tuesday full pardons to 15 individuals and commuted part or entire sentences of another five individuals. Among those pardoned are George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan, both convicted of making false statements to the FBI as part of the Mueller investigation. The White House emphasized that these were “process-related crimes” and [...]

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A jury failed to reach a verdict Wednesday in the retrial of former Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten, ending weeks of deliberation in a mistrial. “We have reexamined our views and continued our discussions about the evidence and determined that individually we cannot ‘surrender honest conviction as to the weight or effect of evidence solely [...]

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