Pardons in killings of Iraqi civilians by US contractors stir angry response 23 Dec, 2020 11:03 PM 6 minutes to read Other The courtroom monitors carried the image of a smiling 9-year-old boy as his father pleaded for the punishment of four US government contractors convicted in shootings that killed that child and more than a dozen other Iraqi civilians. "What's the difference," Mohammad Kinani al-Razzaq asked a Washington judge at an emotional 2015 sentencing hearing, "between these criminals and terrorists?" The shootings of civilians by Blackwater employees at a crowded Baghdad traffic circle in September 2007 prompted an international outcry, left a reputational black eye on US operations at the height of the Iraq war and put the government on the defensive over its use of private contractors in military zones. The resulting criminal prosecutions spanned years in Washington but came to an abrupt end Tuesday when President Donald Trump pardoned the convicted contractors, an act that human rights activists and some Iraqis decried as a miscarriage of justice.