ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A lawyer for the navy contractor being sued by three survivors of the infamous Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq informed jurors Monday that the plaintiffs are suing the flawed individuals.
“In case you imagine they had been abused … inform them to make their declare in opposition to the U.S. authorities,” stated John O’Connor, protection legal professional for Reston, Virginia-based navy contractor CACI, throughout closing arguments on the civil trial in federal courtroom. “Why did not they sue the individuals who actively abused them?”
The lawsuit introduced by the three former Abu Ghraib detainees marks the primary time a U.S. jury has weighed claims of abuse on the jail, which was the location of a worldwide scandal 20 years in the past when photographs grew to become public exhibiting U.S. troopers smiling as they inflicted abusive and humiliating remedy on detainees within the months after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The swimsuit alleges that civilian interrogators equipped by CACI to Abu Ghraib contributed to the torture the plaintiffs by conspiring with navy police to “soften up” detainees for interrogations.
CACI, in its closing arguments, relied partially on a authorized principle often known as the “borrowed servant doctrine,” which states an employer cannot be responsible for its workers’ conduct if one other entity is controlling and directing these workers’ work.
On this case, CACI says the Army was directing and controlling its workers of their work as interrogators.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs disputed that CACI relinquished management of its interrogators to the Army. At trial, they launched proof that CACI’s contract with the Army required CACI to oversee its personal workers. Jurors additionally noticed a piece of the Army Subject Handbook that pertains to contractors and states that “solely contractors might supervise and provides route to their workers.
Muhammad Faridi, one of many plaintiffs’ attorneys, informed jurors that the case is easier than CACI’s attorneys are attempting to make it.
He stated that if CACI interrogators conspired with navy police to inflict abuse on detainees to melt them up for interrogations, then the jury can discover CACI liable even when CACI interrogators by no means themselves inflicted abuse on any of the three plaintiffs.
All three plaintiffs testified to horrible remedy together with beatings, sexual assaults, being threatened with canines and compelled to put on ladies’s underwear, however stated the abuse was both inflicted by troopers, or by civilians who could not be recognized as CACI employees. In some circumstances, the detainees stated they could not see who was abusing them as a result of they’d baggage over their heads.
As proof of CACI’s complicity, jurors heard testimony from two retired generals who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004; each concluded that CACI interrogators engaged in misconduct.
Faridi informed the jury that whereas lots of the troopers who abused detainees had been convicted and sentenced to jail, CACI has not but been held accountable.
“When our nation’s navy discovered in regards to the abuse, they did not cowl it up,” Faridi stated. “Our nation’s navy held the navy police members who had been perpetrating the abuse accountable. CACI escaped legal responsibility.”
And Faridi stated that even when the Army requested CACI to carry its its interrogators accountable, it nonetheless sought to evade accountability. In Could 2004, the Army requested CACI to fireplace one in every of its interrogators, Dan Johnson, after one of many Abu Ghraib photographs confirmed Johnson interrogating a detainee who was compelled into a clumsy crouching place that investigators concluded was an unlawful stress place.
CACI contested Johnson’s dismissal, writing that the “picture depicts what seems to be a comparatively relaxed scene” and saying that “squatting is frequent and unremarkable amongst Iraqis.”
“I will go away that to you to think about whether or not you discover that offensive,” Faridi informed the jury Monday.
At trial, CACI workers testified they defended Johnson’s work as a result of Army personnel had requested them via again channels to take action. O’Connor stated that out of the numerous a whole lot of photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib, the picture of Johnson is the one one depicting a CACI worker, and it exhibits him questioning not one of many plaintiffs however an Iraqi policeman after somebody had smuggled a gun into the jail and shot at navy police.
O’Connor additionally apologized for components of his case that had been “lengthy, annoying and boring” however stated he had no selection as a result of the U.S. authorities claimed that some proof, together with the identities of interrogators, was categorised. So jurors, moderately than listening to stay testimony, had been subjected to lengthy audio recordings during which the interrogators’ voices had been doctored and their solutions had been typically interrupted by authorities attorneys who instructed them to not reply the query.
The trial was delayed by greater than 15 years of authorized wrangling and questions over whether or not CACI may very well be sued. A number of the debate targeted on the query of immunity — there had lengthy been an assumption that the U.S. authorities would maintain sovereign immunity from a civil swimsuit, and CACI argued that, as a authorities contractor, it might get pleasure from spinoff immunity.
However U.S. District Choose Leonie Brinkema, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, decided that the U.S. authorities can’t declare immunity in circumstances involving basic violations of worldwide norms, corresponding to torture allegations. And, in consequence, CACI couldn’t declare any sort of spinoff immunity, both.
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