ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A lawyer for the military contractor being sued by three survivors of Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison told jurors Monday that prosecutors are charging the wrong people.
“If you think they have been abused … tell them to file their claim against the U.S. government,” John O’Connor, attorney for Reston, Virginia-based military contractor CACI, said during closing arguments during the civil trial in federal court. . “Why didn’t they charge the people who were actively abusing them?”
The lawsuit filed by the three former Abu Ghraib detainees marks the first time a U.S. jury has weighed claims of prison abuse. Twenty years ago, there was a worldwide scandal when photos became public showing American soldiers smiling as they inflicted beatings. degrading treatment of detainees in the months following the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The lawsuit alleges that civilian interrogators provided by CACI to Abu Ghraib contributed to the torture of prosecutors by conspiring with military police to “soften up” detainees for interrogations.
In its closing arguments, CACI relied in part on a legal theory known as the “borrowed servant doctrine,” which holds that an employer cannot be liable for the conduct of its employees if another entity controls and directs the work of those employees.
In this case, CACI says the military directed and controlled its employees in their work as interrogators.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs disputed that CACI had turned over control of its interrogators to the military. At trial, they introduced evidence that CACI’s contract with the military required CACI to supervise its own employees. Jurors also saw a section of the Army Field Manual that addresses contractors and states that “only contractors may supervise and direct their employees.
Muhammad Faridi, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, told jurors that the case is simpler than CACI’s attorneys are trying to make it.
He said that if CACI interrogators conspired with military police to abuse detainees to soften them up for interrogations, the jury could hold CACI liable even if CACI interrogators themselves never committed abuse against any of the three plaintiffs.
All three accusers testified to terrible treatment, including beatings, assaults, threats with dogs and being forced to wear women’s underwear, but said the abuse was inflicted either by soldiers or by civilians who could not be identified as CACI employees. In some cases, detainees said they could not see who was assaulting them because they had bags over their heads.
As evidence of CACI’s complicity, jurors heard testimony from two retired generals who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004; both concluded that CACI interrogators were guilty of misconduct.
Faridi told the jury that although many of the soldiers who abused detainees were sentenced to prison terms, CACI has not yet been held accountable.
“When our country’s military heard about the abuse, they did not cover it up,” Faridi said. “Our country’s military held accountable the members of the military police who committed the abuse. CACI escaped liability.”
And Faridi said that even when the military asked CACI to hold its interrogators accountable, it still tried to avoid responsibility. In May 2004, the military asked CACI to fire one of its interrogators, Dan Johnson, after one of the Abu Ghraib photos showed Johnson interrogating a detainee who was forced into an awkward, crouched position that investigators said concluded that this was an illegal stress position.
CACI disputed Johnson’s dismissal, writing that the “photo depicts a relatively relaxed scene” and saying that “squatting is common and inconspicuous among Iraqis.”
“I leave it to you to consider whether you find that offensive,” Faridi told the jury on Monday.
During the trial, CACI employees testified that they defended Johnson’s work because military personnel had asked them to do so through back channels. O’Connor said that of the many hundreds of photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib, Johnson’s photo is the only one depicting a CACI employee, and it shows him questioning not one of the accusers but an Iraqi police officer after someone gun in prison and shot at military police.
O’Connor also apologized for parts of his case that were “lengthy, tedious and boring,” but said he had no choice because the U.S. government claimed some evidence, including the identities of interrogators, was classified. So, instead of hearing live testimony, jurors were subjected to lengthy audio recordings in which the interrogators’ voices were spoofed and their answers often interrupted by government lawyers who instructed them not to answer the question.
The process was delayed by more than fifteen years of legal wrangling and questions about whether CACI could be brought to trial. Some of the debate focused on the issue of immunity – there has long been an assumption that the US government would retain sovereign immunity from a civil suit, and CACI argued that as a government contractor it would enjoy derivative immunity.
But U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, in a first-of-its-kind ruling, ruled that the U.S. government cannot claim immunity in cases involving fundamental violations of international norms, such as allegations of torture. And as a result, CACI could not claim any form of derivative immunity.