Private military companies and war crimes

firms offering services that involve the potential exercise of force in a systematic way and by military or paramilitary means, as well as the enhancement, the transfer, the facilitation, the deterrence, or the defusing of this potential, or the knowledge required to implement it, to clients».

city of Hodeida on 22 January, 2019 (AFP)

Technically, war crimes are defined in the statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), which includes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as
wilful killing, or causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health;
torture or inhumane treatment;
unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property;
forcing a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of a hostile power;
depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial;
unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer; and
taking hostages

War

A Blackwater Security Company MD-530F helicopter aids in securing the site of a car bomb explosion in Baghdad, in December 2004, during the Iraq War.

L. Heard, Nicholas A. Slatten and Evan S. Liberty.

A vehicle that was destroyed in the 2007 Blackwater attack in Baghdad

Blackwater military company

its power and global interests U.S. leaders have committed crimes as a matter of course and structural necessity. A strict application of international law would … have given every U.S. president of the past 50 years a Nuremberg treatment»

former Blackwater contractor accused in the shooting of dozens of unarmed Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007.

Dustin L. Heard, center, a former Blackwater security guard, was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for his role in a 2007 shooting of unarmed civilians in Baghdad.