Retired general’s testimony links private contractor to Abu Ghraib abuses
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — An Army general who investigated prisoner abuse at Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison two decades ago testified Tuesday that a civilian contractor instructed prison guards to “soften up” detainees for interrogations.
Retired Gen. Antonio Taguba told jurors that the contractor, Steven Stefanowicz, even tried to intimidate the general as he investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib.
‘He leaned on the table and stared at me. He did not answer the questions directly,” Taguba said. “He tried to intimidate me.”
Taguba’s testimony was the strongest evidence yet that civilian employees of the Virginia-based military contractor CACI played a role in Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse.
Three former inmates at the prison have sued CACI in federal court in Alexandria, claiming the company contributed to the torturous treatment they suffered. The trial, which was delayed by more than 15 years of legal wrangling, marks the first time Abu Ghraib detainees have been able to bring a civil case before a U.S. jury.
The lawsuit alleges that CACI is liable for the mistreatment of the three plaintiffs because the company provided the military with civilian interrogators assigned to Abu Ghraib and conspired with military police who served as prison guards to torture the detainees.
In a report Taguba completed in 2004, he recommended that Stefanowicz be fired, reprimanded and lose his security clearance for “permitting and/or instructing” military police to engage in illegal and abusive tactics.
“He clearly knew that his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba’s report concluded.
In testimony Tuesday, Taguba said he personally interviewed Stefanowicz for about an hour as part of his investigation.
“He was a very reserved type of personality,” Taguba said of Stefanowicz, often called “Big Steve” by Abu Ghraib staff.
Taguba said his investigation focused on military police and his investigation into the role of civilian interrogators was limited. But he felt compelled to look into it, he said, because he received credible testimony from military police that civilians played a major role in what happened.
The MPs told Taguba that they did not receive clear instructions from within their own military chain of command, and that Stefanowicz and other civilian personnel ultimately filled the void. Taguba said the military chain of command was unclear and several commanders did not cooperate with each other, all of which contributed to a chaotic atmosphere in the prison.
Taguba said he had been conducting his investigation for several weeks before he even understood that civilians were conducting interrogations at Abu Ghraib. He said he and his staff heard several references to CACI but initially misunderstood them, believing people were saying “khaki” instead.
Under cross-examination, Taguba acknowledged the limits of his investigation. A second report, completed by Major General George Fay, looked more directly at the role of military intelligence and civilian contractors in Abu Ghraib.
Taguba also acknowledged that his report contained several errors, including misidentifying a CACI worker as an employee of another contractor, and another civilian contractor as a CACI employee.
CACI’s lawyers emphasized that Stefanowicz was never instructed to interview any of the three plaintiffs in the case.
While Taguba was testifying about Stefanowicz, an attorney asked him if he had indeed been intimidated by the CACI contractor.
“Not on your life,” Taguba replied.
The jury on Tuesday also heard from one of the three plaintiffs in the case, Asa’ad Hamza Zuba’e, who testified remotely from Iraq through an Arabic interpreter. Zuba’e said he was kept naked, threatened with dogs and forced to masturbate in front of prison guards.
CACI’s lawyers questioned his claims. They wondered, among other things, how he could have been threatened with dogs when government reports showed no dogs had been sent to Iraq at the time he said it happened.