Paul Dickinson, who represented the family of nine-year-old Ali Kinani killed in the 2007 massacre, is outraged at the president’s pardons of the veterans involved.
A lawyer who represented the family of a child killed by U.S. government contractors during the Iraq War has described the decision by President Donald Trump to grant pardons to four of the men involved as « unconscionable. » Nine-year-old Ali Kinani was among at least 14 people killed in and around Nisour Square, Baghdad, on 16 September,2007, by Blackwater private security contractors who had been assigned to guard a U.S. diplomatic convoy. Military veterans Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted in 2014 by a U.S. federal court of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and other charges and given sentences of between 12 and 15 years. Nicholas Slatten, who was the first to start shooting, was sentenced to life in prison. But on Tuesday, the White House announced in a statement that Trump had pardoned the four in a move it said was « broadly supported by the public, » adding that the men « have a long history of service to the nation. » Paul Dickinson, a civil litigation attorney in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the law firm James Scott Farrin, represented the family of Ali, as well as four other victims’ families, in a civil lawsuit. « President Trump has pardoned a child murderer, » Dickinson told Newsweek. Dickinson said that following years of legal proceedings, trials, appeals, dropped charges and re-trials, when the convictions were secured, the victims’ families he represented « were pleased that they had felt they had got some justice beyond the financial recovery that I was able to obtain for them—some criminal justice.
