Abu Ghraib Victims Face Lawsuit
By Mint Press News Desk
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Less than 10
years after the world saw the first images of torture and abuse at the
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, it is the victims who are now being sued by
military contractor CACI International, seeking to recover fees from
recent trials. Years later, victims are still struggling to cope with
the memories from their ordeals.
"When I remember it now, I just want to set myself on fire," says Taleb al-Maleji,
a former Abu Ghraib prisoner, in an Al-Jazeera interview. "I was one of
those Linda [a U.S. soldier] forced to be naked. There were sniffer
dogs and sound bombs. They would take off our clothes and splash cold
water in the cells in winter on our blankets and clothes so we couldn’t
sleep or sit."
Al-Maleji was never charged with a crime and was later
released. He now lives with his elderly mother and four children in a
rented home in Sadr City. His children say that he is too weak to work
and is forever changed by what he went through. "I didn’t recognize my
father when he came back. He was different — he was so weak," says
Hawra’a, his eldest daughter. Al-Maleji now spends his days smoking
cigarettes and biting his wrists — two activities that he claims offers
respite from the horrors of his past.
Common Dreams News Network reports
that CACI International was recently cleared of any wrongdoing in a
trial originally brought by a group of 256 Iraqi citizens who were
former detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. After recently losing their
case in a U.S. court, the military contractor announced this week that
it will seek more than $15,000 in compensation from the plaintiffs to cover witness fees, travel allowances and deposition transcripts.
"Given the wealth disparities between this multibillion
dollar entity and four torture victims, given what they went through,
it’s surprising and appears to be an attempt to intimidate and punish
these individuals for asserting their rights to sue in U.S. courts,"
said Baher Azny, legal director for the Center for Constitutional
Rights. The current lawsuit involves only four of the 256 who came
forward with claims against CACI and the U.S. military.
The announcement comes several weeks after a case against
CACI was dismissed in U.S. courts. U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee
ruled that CACI is "immune from suit for claims arising from acts
related to its contract or performed in connection with military combat
operations."
Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School and a
constitutional adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in
2003 responded to the ruling by saying, "The court is saying, 'We’re
never going to look into it. We don’t want to know what happened in Abu
Ghraib.’"
What are the allegations against CACI and how credible are
the claims? The plaintiffs charged that CACI was part of a conspiracy to
subject prisoners to "electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep
deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions;
sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated
detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs."
It’s just a fraction of the alleged torture and misconduct
that has been acknowledged by the Department of Defense dating back to
2004.
By the Department of the Army’s own admission in the 2004 Taguba Report,
army personnel and contractors were identified in acts that included
"Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; and
Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for
photographing," among other charges.
None of the contractors have been prosecuted and 11 soldiers have
been convicted of various minor charges including dereliction of duty.
Nobody has been charged in the deaths of several detainees.Source |
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