Donald Trump gives pardon to 15 dangerous criminals

President Donald Trump has granted a full pardon to 15 people, including four former government contractors convicted in a 2007 genocide in Baghdad that killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians and the use of private security guards in a war zone An international ruckus ensued.

Others pardoned by Trump on Tuesday include George Papadopoulos, a former campaign aide who pleaded guilty to Russian mediation in the 2016 presidential election and as part of an investigation by two former Republican legislators.

The outgoing president also pardoned 36-year-old Alex van der Zwan, the Dutch son-in-law of Russian billionaire German Khan.

Van Der Zwan was jailed for 30 days and fined $ 20,000 for lying to investigators at US Special Counsel Robert Mueller about contact with an officer in Trump's 2016 campaign.

Grotesque 'Black Water Pardon

Supporters of former Blackwater Worldwide contractors lobbied for amnesty, saying the men were heavily punished in the investigation and prosecution. All four were serving long prison terms.

They were part of an armoured convoy of escort vehicles escorting US embassy officials who opened fire on hordes of unarmed Iraqi civilians.

Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten were convicted in 2014 after a month-long hearing in a federal court in Washington, and each defended his innocence on a sentencing hearing the following year.

Slow, Liberty, and Hurd were sentenced to 30 years in prison, although after a federal appeals court ordered them to resent them, they were each awarded a much shorter sentence. Slayton, who prosecutors pleaded guilty to ignoring the fight, was sentenced to life in prison.

A federal appeals court later overturned Slaton's first-degree murder conviction, but the Justice Department tried him again and was sentenced to another life imprisonment last year.

‘Dangerous’ crime

Papadopoulos, 33, was an expert to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

He declared guilty in 2017 to lying to FBI agents about the timing and significance of his relationships with people who alleged to have ties to top Russian authorities.

“The defendant’s crime was dangerous and created damage to the government’s probe into Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election,” a sentencing recommendation memorandum from then-US Special Counsel Robert Mueller had announced.

He served 12 days of a 14-day jail in federal prison, then was put on a 12-month supervised release.

The White House announced Papadopoulos was charged with “a process-related crime, one number of presenting false reports,” as part of the Mueller probe, which Trump had criticised as a witch hunt.