Evan Liberty was reading in the top bunk of his cell one evening late last month when a prison supervisor delivered news he had hoped for.
“He says: ‘Are you ready for this?’” Liberty said. “I said: ‘Uh, I’m not sure. What is going on?’ He said: ‘Presidential pardon. Pack your stuff.’”
Liberty is one of four former Blackwater contractors pardoned by US President Donald Trump in one of his final acts in office, freeing them from prison after a 2007 shooting rampage in Baghdad that killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians.
Photo: AP
Even for a president who has repeatedly exercised his pardon power on personal associates and political supporters, Trump’s clemency for the contractors was met with especially intense condemnation, both in the US and the Middle East.
Historically, presidential pardons have been reserved for nonviolent crimes, not manslaughter or murder, and the traditional process led by the US Department of Justice values acceptance of responsibility and remorse from those convicted of crimes.
The Blackwater contractors meet none of that criteria. They were convicted in the killings of unarmed Iraqi women and children, and have long been defiant in their assertions of innocence.
In an interview with The Associated Press, his first since being released from prison, Liberty, 38, again expressed little remorse for actions he said were defensible given the context.
“I feel like I acted correctly,” he said of his conduct in 2007. “I regret any innocent loss of life, but I’m just confident in how I acted and I can basically feel peace with that.”
The Blackwater rampage marked one of the darkest chapters of the Iraq war, staining the US government’s reputation and prompting an international outcry about the role of contractors in military zones.
The guards have long maintained they were targeted by insurgent gunfire at the traffic circle where the shooting occurred.
Prosecutors argued there was no evidence to support that claim, noting that many victims were shot while in their vehicles or while taking shelter or trying to flee.
After a months-long trial in 2014, a jury convicted the men in the deaths of 14 civilians and of injuring even more. A judge called the shootings an “overall wild thing” that cannot be condoned.
Liberty said he understands many might view him as undeserving of clemency, but attributed it to what he insists is a misguided narrative of the shooting.
In the interview, he said that he did not shoot in the direction of any of the victims.
“I didn’t shoot at anybody that wasn’t shooting at me,” he said.
He said he and the others would “never take an innocent life. We responded to a threat accordingly.”
Liberty, whose 30-year sentence was cut by roughly half last year, is not certain how he came to be pardoned and said he has not spoken with Trump.
However, the group does have supporters, some with ties to the White House.
The Blackwater firm, whose name has since changed, was founded by former US Navy SEAL Erik Prince, a Trump ally whose sister, Betsy DeVos, is the US secretary of education.
Their cause was also championed by Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, an army veteran.
After six years behind bars, Liberty had tried to not get his hopes up about a pardon.
“Dumbfounded” when the news came, he grabbed a photograph of his grandfather, a list of Spanish vocabulary he had been studying and a motivational book on discipline, leaving the rest behind.
The New Hampshire native and marine veteran said he is uncertain of future plans, although he is passionate about physical fitness and interested in assisting veterans’ organizations.
He said he is grateful to his supporters and to Trump for what he calls a “second chance at life.”
“I feel like it’s my duty to go out and do something positive and live a good life, because they gave me a second chance, so that’s basically my goal,” he said.
In announcing the Blackwater pardons, the White House cited the men’s military service, the support they received and the tangled history of a case that zigzagged for years in Washington’s federal court, turning on radically different interpretations of the shooting.
Criticism was swift. A Washington Post editorial called the pardons a “unique threat to national security” and suggested that the guards had committed “astonishing acts of inhumanity.”
Iraqi citizens who spoke to reporters described old wounds being reopened.
Soon after the announcement, a photograph of a smiling nine-year-old victim circulated widely online.
The boy’s father told the BBC that Trump “broke my life again.”
“They haven’t denied doing what they did,” said Paul Dickinson, who represented victims in a lawsuit over the shootings. “They haven’t apologized for what they did. They haven’t admitted any wrongdoing in what they did.”
Blackwater guards, who as US Department of State contractors were responsible for providing diplomatic security, were already seen as operating with impunity in Iraq.
The rampage further escalated international scrutiny of them, prompted multiple investigations and strained US-Iraqi relations.
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