When Blackwater Killed a Nine Year Old Boy

By Steve Hynd

Jeremy Scahill says this is "the saddest story I have ever written". It's an eyewitness account of the Nisour Square massacre by a father who saw his 9 year old son die before his eyes, and refuses to accept Blackwater's blood money.

A snippet is warranted, but please, please read the whole thing slowly and carefully, then ask yourself what the fuck is going on with America.

One of the Blackwater shooters was on top of an armored vehicle firing an automatic weapon, he says. "Every time he would finish his clip, he would throw it on the ground and would load another one in and would start shooting again, and finish the new one and replace it with another." One young Iraqi man got out of his car to run, and as he fled, the Blackwater shooter gunned him down and continued firing into his body as it lay on the pavement, Mohammed says. "He was on the ground bleeding, and they're shooting nonstop, and it wasn't single bullets." The Blackwater shooter, he says, would fire at other Iraqis and cars and then return to pump more bullets into the dead man on the ground. "He sank in his own blood, and every minute the [Blackwater shooter] would shoot left and right and then go back to shoot the dead man, and I could see that his body would shake with every bullet. He was already dead, but his body was still reacting to the bullets. [The shooter] would fire at someone else and then go back to shoot at this dead man." Shaking his head slowly, Mohammed says somberly, "The guy is dead in a pool of blood. Why would you continue shooting him?"

...Ali and his father were inseparable. Ali's older brothers called him "Daddy's favorite," and the family affectionately called him by his kid nickname, Allawi. "He was the closest of my sons to me. He was my youngest and was always indulged," recalls Mohammed. "He would sleep on my arm. He's 9 and half years old but still sleeps on my arm. He has his own room, but he never slept alone." When the boy turned 9, Ali's father thought, "This can't go on--him sleeping on my arm as his pillow. So I said, 'Son, you're older now; go sleep like your brothers, in your bed in your room. It doesn't work anymore; you're getting older. You're gonna be a man soon.'"

"As you wish, father," Ali said. "He always said that," Mohammed recalls. "As you wish, father." Ali left the room, but Mohammed looked over and saw the shadow of Ali's feet under the door. "So I called him in, and Ali opened the door and said, 'Daddy, I'm Allawi, not Ali,'" Mohammed remembers. "He was telling me that he's still young." Mohammed gave in, and Ali slept in his arms again. "He never had a pillow besides my arm," says Mohammed.

As he sat in his severely damaged SUV, Mohammed thought that, in the midst of horror, a miracle had blessed his car. We are alive, he thought. As the Blackwater forces retreated, Mohammed told Jenan he was going to go check on the man who had been repeatedly shot by Blackwater. "I was deeply impacted by that man they continued shooting at," Mohammed recalls. As he exited his car, Mohammed's nephew yelled, "Uncle, Ali is dead. Ali is dead!" Jenan began to scream.

Mohammed rushed around to Ali's door and saw that the window was broken. He looked inside and saw his son's head resting against the door. He opened it, and Ali slumped toward him. "I was standing in shock looking at him as the door opened, and his brain fell on the ground between my feet," Mohammed recalls. "I looked and his brain was on the ground."

I will freely admit I cried, a lot, reading this piece. I've a 6 year old son who still likes to use dad's arm as a pillow sometimes. How this father can face life without a screaming need for vengeance is beyond me - he's some kind of saint. They offered him $20,000 and he refused it, saying all he wants is a letter from Blackwater admitting they killed his son and apologising.

The federal court threw out criminal charges against the Blackwater guards involved for prosecutorial misconduct, even though one pled guilty and

admitted that he and the other five defendants "opened fire with automatic weapons and grenade launchers on unarmed civilians...killing at least fourteen people" and wounding at least twenty others. "None of these victims was an insurgent, and many were shot while inside of civilian vehicles that were attempting to flee"

And we all tut-tutted and said how terrible when we heard about that at the turn of the year. But reading this account brings it home just how terrible the actions of these butchers were that day. All are currently walking free in America.

These people are terrorists. You can't argue that terrorists should be set free if their prosecutions were fouled up by misconduct - as the rule of law clearly says - and not include these people. But you also can't leave them out if you say that terrorists can be held without rights or trials, forever.