One of the four former Blackwater agents who received a pardon from lame duck president Donald Trump after killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad in 2007 stand by his actions that day, claiming “I acted correctly,” the Associated Press reports.
Evan Liberty, 38, was part of a team that was escorting a dignitary through the area when, they claimed, they can under gunfire from insurgents. Prosecutors, however, found no evidence that anyone was shooting at them and found that the 14 people they killed were all unarmed and seeking shelter or trying to evade the fight. Among the 14 killed was an 8-year-old boy.
“I feel like I acted correctly,” Liberty said. “I regret any innocent loss of life, but I’m just confident in how I acted and I can basically feel peace with that. … I didn’t shoot at anybody that wasn’t shooting at me.”
Liberty and the three other Blackwater mercenaries was pardoned by Trump. Blackwater is owned by Erik Prince, the brother of Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Liberty and two others were found guilty of voluntary and attempted manslaughter charges and of using a machine gun to commit a violent crime in a US jury trial in 2014 and initially sentenced to 30 years in prison. A court later cut their sentences in half.
The fourth shooter was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Trump pardons for the four at the urging by Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who said repeatedly, including on air, that the four were just “doing their job.” As with many of the pardons issued by Trump, the pardons bypassed the normal procedures of going through the Department of Justice Office of the Pardon Attorney, which requires an expression of regret for one’s criminal actions.