Abu Ghraib military contractor warned bosses of abuses 2 weeks after arriving, testimony reveals
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A civilian contractor sent as an interrogator into Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison resigned within two weeks of his arrival and told his company executives that detainee abuse was likely to continue.
Jurors saw the October 2003 email from Rich Arant, who worked for military contractor CACI, during testimony Wednesday in a lawsuit brought by three Abu Ghraib survivors. The former inmates are suing CACI, claiming the Reston, Virginia-based company is partly responsible for the abuse they suffered.
CACI had a contract to provide interrogators to the military after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and rushed to provide the necessary personnel. The first CACI interrogators arrived at Abu Ghraib on September 28 of that year.
Arant sent his resignation letter to CACI on October 14. He informed his bosses of his concerns about the handling of prisoners, including what he described as an unauthorized interview of a female prisoner by male interrogators. He wrote that “violations of the well-written rules of engagement are likely to continue to occur.”
Senior CACI officials took no action on Arant’s resignation letter, CACI lawyers said. Subsequent investigations showed that horrific abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including physical and sexual attacks on prisoners, continued for months until the military launched an investigation in January 2004.
Shocking photos of the abuse became public in April 2004, resulting in a worldwide scandal.
The trial now underway in U.S. District Court in Alexandria has been delayed by 15 years of legal wrangling and multiple attempts by CACI to have the case dismissed. It is the first lawsuit filed by Abu Ghraib detainees to be heard by an American jury.
During a 2021 hearing, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema warned CACI that Arant’s email would be “a smoking gun in virtually any trial.”
“I am surprised that no one at CACI would have wanted to follow up on this type of memo,” Brinkema said, according to a transcript of that hearing. “Has anyone looked into Arant’s email? Did anyone talk to him and find out what exactly bothered him about Abu Ghraib?’
CACI’s lawyers have acknowledged that Arant’s dismissal did not give rise to any further action. But they have said his email does not actually detail abuses by CACI interrogators, but only the misconduct of Army soldiers over which the company had no control.
“That’s someone saying, ‘I don’t like the way soldiers do interrogations, but CACI people are crystal clear here,’” CACI attorney John O’Connor said during the 2021 hearing.
Later investigations by the military found that three CACI interrogators – among dozens sent to Abu Ghraib – were guilty of abusing detainees. The interrogators used unauthorized dogs, humiliated prisoners by forcing them to wear women’s underwear, forced prisoners into stress positions and ordered a military police sergeant to push and twist a bat into a prisoner’s arm, the investigation found.
On Wednesday, jurors heard videotaped testimony from retired Maj. Gen. George Fay, who led one of the investigations.
During cross-examination, CACI attorneys asked Fay if he could connect the abuses involving CACI contractors to any of the three plaintiffs in the case. Fay said he couldn’t. Many of the specific cases of abuse detailed in Fay’s report involved Iraqi police officers who were believed to be involved in smuggling a weapon into the prison. None of the plaintiffs were police officers.
CACI has argued that even if the plaintiffs suffered abuse, the company should not be held liable unless there is evidence that CACI interrogators were directly involved.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs say this issue is irrelevant because they argue that CACI interrogators played a key role in creating the overall abusive environment at Abu Ghraib by encouraging military police to “soften up” detainees for interrogation.
The trial moved quickly and prosecutors rested their case late Wednesday afternoon. The defense’s first witness was Steven Stefanowicz, one of three CACI interrogators accused of misconduct in Fay’s report.
Stefanowicz testified via a recorded video statement that his work was closely monitored by the military and that the military’s chain of command approved all of his interrogation plans. He denied some of the specific findings against him in the Fay report.
Jurors saw heavily redacted interrogation reports that said Army officers had approved the use of dogs and “audio modification” — a euphemism for loud music played at night to induce sleep deprivation — for one of the detainees assigned to Stefanowicz. But Stefanowicz testified that he never actually used dogs in his interrogations.
He said he had contact with only a small number of detainees and that Army supervisors quickly promoted him from screener to interrogator.
His description of his limited interaction with detainees conflicts with other evidence from the trial. In a written statement, the U.S. government said an Army interrogator once discovered that one of his prisoners was being interrogated by Stefanowicz without consent and had to tell Stefanowicz to stop. Some military police soldiers have said in statements that Stefanowicz was regularly present at the prison’s “hard location” and gave them instructions on how to abuse prisoners.