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A federal jury has awarded $42 million to three former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison, holding the Virginia-based defense contractor CACI Premier Technology partially responsible for the detainees’ torture and abuse during the war in Iraq.
Let’s bring you up to speed: Abu Ghraib prison, located west of Baghdad, was initially built in the 1960s and used by Saddam Hussein’s regime to imprison and often torture political dissidents. Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the prison was repurposed by the US military as a detention facility primarily used for Iraqis suspected of insurgency or connections to terrorist activities. Managed initially by the US military police and later involving contracted civilian firms such as CACI, Abu Ghraib was intended to house individuals for interrogation to gather intelligence during the early stages of the war. It closed in 2014.
The torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib were extensive, with methods that included physical beatings, forced nudity, and sexual humiliation. Prisoners were often stripped naked, piled on top of one another, and moved into degrading positions, sometimes while hooded or handcuffed. Detainees were also threatened with sexual violence, attacked by unmuzzled dogs, and deprived of basic necessities like blankets and clothing. Military personnel took photographs of these abuses, capturing scenes of detainees hooded, shackled, or forced to stand in painful “stress positions” for extended periods. These images, which leaked to the public in 2004, depicted US soldiers grinning and giving thumbs-up while standing over humiliated prisoners, leading to a global outcry.
What’s going on now: Three former detainees of Abu Ghraib filed a lawsuit against CACI Premier Technology ging that the company’s civilian interrogators were complicit in the torture and abuse they suffered at the prison. The plaintiffs, Suhail Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili, and Asa’ad Al-Zubae, claimed that CACI personnel worked alongside US military personnel to “soften up” detainees through degrading and violent tactics before interrogation sessions. After years of legal delays, a federal jury in Virginia found CACI liable, awarding the plaintiffs $42 million in damages — $3 million each in compensatory damages and $11 million each in punitive damages.
CACI’s defense: Lawyers for CACI argued in court that the company’s civilian interrogators were not directly involved in the physical abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib and acted solely under the authority and directives of the US military. CACI’s legal team also pointed to the lack of direct evidence linking their employees to abusive actions and contended that the plaintiffs’ allegations were uncorroborated by other witnesses.
Plaintiff’s lawyers react: Baher Azmy, who represented the three plaintiffs, said, “This is a remarkable moment of justice and vindication for our clients, who fought tirelessly for 16 years to be heard in a US court.
