Defence contractor CACI, whose employees worked at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib, ordered to pay damages after 15-year legal delays.

A United States defence contractor must pay $42m to three Iraqi men who were tortured at Abu Ghraib prison, a US federal jury has ruled. The ruling on Tuesday ends a 15-year legal battle over the role of Virginia-based contractor CACI, whose civilian employees worked at the facility, in acts of torture that took place there.

Al Shimari, a middle school principal, Al-Ejaili, a journalist, and Al-Zuba’e, a fruit vendor, testified that they were subjected to beatings, sexual abuse, forced nudity and other cruel treatment at Abu Ghraib.

“Today is a big day for me and for justice,” said Al-Ejaili, who travelled to the US to testify in person. “I’ve waited a long time for this day. This victory isn’t only for the three plaintiffs in this case against a corporation. This victory is a shining light for everyone who has been oppressed and a strong warning to any company or contractor practising different forms of torture and abuse.”

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
    21·
    9 days ago

    In the US its impossible to jail the torturers, usually they get rewarded. This case is crazy:

    In early 2018, US Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher stabbed a defenseless teenage captive to death in Iraq. According to two SEAL witnesses, Gallagher said over the radio “he’s mine” and walked up to the medic and prisoner, and without saying a word, killed the prisoner by stabbing him repeatedly with his hunting knife. Gallagher and his commanding officer, Lieutenant Jake Portier, then posed for photographs of them standing over the body with some other nearby SEALs. Gallagher then text messaged a friend in California a picture himself holding the dead captive’s head by the hair with the explanation "Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife.” After he was imprisoned, Gallagher’s other crimes came to light: fellow soldiers said they witnessed Gallagher shooting and killing an unarmed old man in a white robe, as well as a young girl walking with other girls. Gallagher boasted that he averaged three kills a day over 80 days, including four women. In video interviews with investigators, multiple SEALs described how he would go on solo “gun runs,” emptying loads of heavy machine gun fire into neighborhoods with no apparent targets. “I think he just wants to kill anybody he can,” Corey Scott, a medic from the platoon, told Navy investigators. After his case went public, it became a conservative rallying cry: A website soliciting donations for his defense raised > $375k, and a prominent veterans’ apparel maker sold “Free Eddie” T-shirts. Spurred on by his family, 40 Republican members of Congress signed a letter in March calling for the Navy to free him, and soon after, US President Trump had him released from prison to house arrest. In July, 2019, he was acquitted of all charges. Gallagher was one of three military personnel accused or convicted of war crimes on whose behalf Trump had intervened to pardon or promote. Trump told a rally audience days after his intervention, “I stuck up for three great warriors against the deep state.” Gallagher has now started a chain of companies selling clothing and nutritional supplements.