WASHINGTON — A former Blackwater security guard was sentenced to life in prison and three others got 30-year terms on Monday, April 13, in the massacre of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad traffic circle in 2007, closing a case that had outraged Iraqis and inflamed anti-U.S. sentiment around the world.

The Sept. 16 incident stood out for its brazenness and formed a tense backdrop to talks between the United States and Iraq over the continued presence of U.S. forces in Iraq. It also sparked debate over private security contractors working for the U.S. government in war zones.

According to the Intercept, the lawyers of one of the guards apologized to an Iraqi victim’s father in court. Mohammed Kinani, whose 9-year-old son was murdered in the massacre, said his mission was accomplished by the sentence.

“The lawyer [for one of the defendants] yesterday after we talked in court said, ‘Mr. Kinani, I am apologizing,’” Kinani said. “Too late. After seven years, too late.”

Speaking to the Intercept Kinani added that he is still traumatized by the ordeal.

“Every night I bother my neighbors. I yell in the night with nightmares,” Kinani told The Intercept. Kinani survived the massacre, was a witness in the trial and spoke yesterday at the sentencing.

The four guards opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers on the Iraqis, including women and children, at Nisur Square. A heavily armed, four-truck Blackwater Worldwide convoy the men were in had been trying to clear a path for U.S. diplomats.

Nicholas Slatten, 31, of Tennessee was convicted in October of killing the driver of a car the defendants had argued at trial they believed contained a bomb.

Paul Slough, 35, of Texas; Evan Liberty, 32, of New Hampshire; and Dustin Heard, 33, of Tennessee, who were convicted of manslaughter, were each sentenced to 30 years in prison, the mandatory minimum they faced.

Momentarily choking up before he passed sentence in front of a packed court room, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said it was an extraordinary case.

“It’s clear these fine young men just panicked,” he said. “But the overall wild thing that went on just cannot be condoned by this court.”

In addition to the killings, 17 Iraqis were injured.

Blackwater’s founder Eric Prince, an auto-parts heir and former Navy SEAL who netted more than $1 billion in contracts for Blackwater, has not faced any official accountability for the incident. “Erik Prince, he was in charge,” Kinani said. “And he should be in that courtroom yesterday.”

North Carolina-based Blackwater was sold and renamed several times after the incident. It is now called Academi, based in northern Virginia.

U.S. federal prosecutors had called the guards’ action “horrendous” and urged longer sentences for Slough, Liberty and Heard.

In court, Fatimah Al Fahdwi, whose 9-year-old son was killed, held up a picture of him before the judge.

“Why did you guys do this to me?” she said to the men, breaking down in tears. “Why did you guys kill my son?”

In their statements, all four former guards maintained their innocence.

“I could not and I did not kill your son,” Slough said to the family. “I feel utterly betrayed by the same government I served honorably.”

The defendants all maintain have vowed to appeal, which will likely drag out an already protracted case. The long prosecution was derailed several times by the Justice Department’s mistakes, and dismissed once over accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. Last year, prosecutors missed a deadline for statute of limitations for certain charges against Slatten.

The kind of atrocities committed by the Blackwater case and others like it — from Abu Ghraib to the massacre at Haditha to CIA waterboarding — may be largely absent from public awareness in the West nowadays, but it is being used by the “Islamic State” to support its sectarian rhetoric.

In its propaganda, IS has been using Abu Ghraib and other cases of Western abuse to justify and promote its actions in Iraq as the latest episodes in over a decade of constant “Sunni resistance” to “Western aggression” and to “Shi’a betrayal”—as phrased in an IS publication from late 2014 titled “The Revived Caliphate,” which chronicles the rise of IS since 2003 when it was a part of al-Qaeda. 

-Reuters, Intercept, TAAN