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A U.S. military contractor is about to head to trial over allegations that it participated in a conspiracy to torture detainees at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War—20 years after infamous images of the abuse were seen around the globe.
The plaintiffs, three Iraqis detained and tortured at Abu Ghraib, originally sued military contractor CACI, which provided interrogators for the prison, in 2008. Now the civil trial, which is expected to last two weeks, is scheduled to start Monday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. The legal proceedings represent the first khbrknews Abu Ghraib victims will present their claims to a U.S. jury, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing the plaintiffs, has said.
CACI has denied wrongdoing and argued in court filings over the years that the plaintiffs didn’t allege its interrogators directly inflicted abuse or sufficiently prove they directed it.
Charles Tiefer, a retired law professor and former commissioner of the federal Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2008 to 2011, says this trial is “enormously important.”
“The rulings and judgment in this case will set the stage for how future combat is conducted by the United States,” Tiefer says.
If the jury decides against CACI, contractors could “be reined in in the future,” Tiefer says, but if not, “the very reasons we relied so heavily on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan will lead us to rely on them for future service with the military that used to be unthinkable.” The U.S. military still contracts with CACI, with the Army in March awarding the company a $239 million deal to modernize its network.
CACI and the Center for Constitutional Rights declined to comment Friday before the trial.
Four Iraqi civilians sued CACI, another contract company, and three individual contractors in 2008. Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, after whom the case is named, was imprisoned for four years “for no reason,”…
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