A trial that began April 15 on a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights seeks justice for three Iraqi victims of torture inflicted by two U.S.-based government contractors two decades ago. Three key witnesses testified on the first day, following the seating of the jury and presentation of opening arguments by the attorneys.
The lawsuit, Al Shimari v. CACI, alleges that CACI International Inc. and CACI Premier Technology Inc. “directed and participated in illegal conduct, including torture, at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where it was hired by the U.S. to provide interrogation services.”
In October 2002, more than a year after the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution granting President George W. Bush the power to wage war against the Iraqi government. The Iraq War officially began on March 19, 2003, when the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland launched a “shock and awe” bombing campaign that quickly led to the collapse of the Iraq government and the eventual capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003.
“On the broadest level, the case is important because international human rights are important. Torture and, in particular, the torture of detainees around the world, is a tremendous problem,” Beth Stephens, a distinguished professor of law at Rutgers Law School, tells The Progressive. “This case seeks to hold accountable the corporation that was responsible for torture. Any accountability for torture is rare in this world and is important.”
In the wake of the 2003 invasion, the United States took possession of Abu Ghraib, Iraq’s most notorious prison, located twenty miles west of Baghdad. A sign at the front of the prison read: “America is the friend of all Iraqi people.” Prisoners were divided into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of “crimes against the coalition”; and suspected “high-value” detainees.
Stephens notes that the U.S. military outsourced the operations of the detention center to private corporations “and encouraged those corporations to interrogate and seek information from detainees with virtually no oversight.” Some of those prisoners subjected to these interpretations “actually had no information and had committed no crimes.”
Abu Ghraib was officially known as the “Baghdad Central Confinement Facility” and, according to Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, a 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report, contained approximately 6,500 to 7,000 detainees. And a 2004 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross found that “military intelligence officers estimated that 70 to 90 percent of those detained in 2003 had been arrested by mistake.”
In May 2004, a series of photographs profiling leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners forced into humiliating poses were broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes II.” The prisoners are shown naked, leashed like dogs and are displayed being electrocuted, beaten, and piled on top of one another pyramid-style. The guards are shown smiling, giving a thumbs-up over their naked prisoners’ bodies.
Public domain
Military guards with naked and hooded prisoners who were forced to form a human pyramid in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, November 2003. This photo was a part of the evidence used against U.S. soldiers accused of abusing and humiliating inmates.
The photos caused a political scandal for the Bush Administration. As Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker in 2004, a secret study conducted by Major General Antonio M. Taguba found numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib between October and December of 2003.
This included pouring cold water on naked detainees, beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair, sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and possibly a broomstick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees. In one instance a dog bit a detainee.
Seven soldiers were convicted for the abuses at Abu Ghraib, but senior officers and intelligence agencies were spared. So were the hired corporations that had conducted the abuse.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit that “works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications,” filed its first case against the military contractor CACI in 2008. It was brought on behalf of Iraqis who had been held at the Abu Ghraib “hard site” prison in 2003 and 2004. The case was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, where CACI is headquartered, under the Alien Tort Statute, which dates from 1789 and permits non-citizens who have been subjected to violations of international law to sue a U.S. corporation in federal court.
The Center is representing three Iraqis civilians who were ultimately released without ever being charged with a crime and who “all continue to suffer from physical and mental injuries caused by the torture and other abuse they endured.” The three are:
Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari was detained from 2003 until 2008, including being held at the Abu Ghraib “hard site” for about two months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him in various ways: He was subjected to electric shocks, deprived of food, threatened by dogs, and kept naked while forced to engage in physical activities to the point of exhaustion.
Asa’ad Hamza Hanfoosh Zuba’e was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib from 2003 until 2004. CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him by subjecting him to extremely hot and cold water, beating his genitals with a stick, and detaining him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation for almost a full year.
Salah Hasan Nusaif Al-Ejaili, an Al Jazeera journalist, was imprisoned at the Abu Ghraib “hard site” for approximately two months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators stripped him and kept him naked, threatened him with dogs, deprived him of food, beat him, and kept him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation.
A fourth victim, Taha Yaseen Arraq Rashid, was dismissed from the case in 2019. He was detained from 2003 until 2005, including at the “hard site,” for about three months. While there, Rashid was placed in stress positions for extended periods of time, shot in the head with a taser gun, and beaten so severely that he suffered broken limbs and vision loss. Rashid was forcibly subjected to sexual acts and made to witness the rape of a female prisoner.
Over the past decade and a half, the case has been a roller-coaster ride of claims and appeals. In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear CACI’s appeal seeking dismissal of the case. Now, the matter is finally getting its day in court. A jury trial began in Virginia on April 15 and is expected to last about two weeks.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is seeking accountability for human rights abuses committed by military and intelligence agencies as well as private contractors. It argues that currently there is no effective U.S. system of contractor accountability and oversight in place. Generally speaking, the Department of Justice is responsible for investigating and prosecuting misconduct. But, in this and other cases, it has failed to do so.
“Unfortunately, in terms of accountability, the U.S. government has protected itself with multiple layers of doctrines of immunity,” Stephens says. “They all function so that it’s impossible to hold the United States accountable in U.S. courts.”
And that is what the case now coming to trial is hoping to accomplish. “It is about accountability for the abuses committed by a corporation hired by the United States to imprison and interrogate people detained by the United States,” Stephens says. “Exposing these abuses sheds light on what the U.S. government did. Hopefully, it contributes toward accountability and prevention going forward.”
The trial is also important for another reason: It gives the victims of abuse an opportunity to tell their stories. “It’s been over twenty years,” says Stephens. “That is always an important part of human rights accountability.”