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In 2003, Haider Muhsin Saleh, was living
in Dearborn Michigan. A former opponent of Saddam Hussein, he
had once been imprisoned and tortured by Saddam's secret police
in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Upon being released he had
fled to Sweden and become a Swedish citizen. When the Hussein
regime fell, Mr. Saleh heeded the United States' call for expatriates
to return to and rebuild Iraq. He did so with his own funds.
Upon his arrival in September of 2003 he was detained and sent
to the same Abu Ghraib prison where he had been previously tortured
by Saddam Hussein. Instead of getting a chance to rebuild his
country he became prisoner #151138 and was subjected to "interrogation."
Mr. Saleh's genitals were roped
to those of other prisoners; his penis stretched with a rope
and beaten with a stick; his own semen poured on his head; his
naked body poured cold water upon it in the dead of winter; his
naked body shocked with an electric stick; his neck wrapped with
a belt which allowed him to be dragged; his head beaten with
a pistol and slammed against a wall; his anus probed; his body
urinated upon. Yet this "interrogation" was different
than the others. It was conducted not by soldiers but average
American citizens, serving as contractors with major American
corporations, CACI and Titan.
In discussions about the corporate
beneficiaries of the War in Iraq, prominent companies like Halliburton
are discussed often. What remains under-reported and under-appreciated
is the fact that this war has afforded a vast collection of corporations
to reap the benefits of lucrative government contracts. A number
of such companies are involved in supervising, maintaining, and
providing support for the numerous prisons in Iraq in the areas
of interrogation, interpretation, and translation.
In 2004, a major Philadelphia
law firm, the Center For Constitutional Rights, the University
of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago School of Law, and
a handful of volunteers a group of lawyers in the United States
brought a civil suit on behalf of Mr. Saleh and the hundreds
of others Iraqi prisoners abused and tortured by American contractors
working for CACI and Titan. The thirty one count complaint accused
CACI and Titan of a whole host of common law torts (such as assault
and battery), as well as violations of international human rights,
and a RICO (Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations
ACT) conspiracy. The essential theory of the case was that CACI
and Titan had a financial motive to increase the amount of interrogation
they conducted. The longer the "interrogations" went
the more they got paid. By 2004, Titan was earning 96% of its
revenue from government contracts.
The 67 page complaint contains
detailed descriptions of the torture suffered by some of the
other named plaintiffs. One Haj Ali was hung from a ceiling while
made and shocked with electric pulses. Umer Abdul Mutalib was
dragged until he went unconscious. Jasim al-Nidawi's private
parts were attacked by dogs. Other detainees were stripped naked
and put in a room with a naked female detainee who had a mesh
bag on her face and was screaming. The complaint also alleges
that one of the private contractors raped a fourteen year old
girl, and provides evidence that there may have been a rape room
set up in the prison. It is important to recognize that all of
these events were carried out by employees of American companies
who were not part of the military. Significant amount of the
information upon which the complaint was based came from the
military's own Fay and Taguba reports. Without those reports
it is unlikely that the world would have known about the abuses
committed by American private contractors.
At the current time the litigation
is in the "discovery" stages in Federal Court in the
District of Columbia . There are two major hurdles for the lawyers
representing the torture victims. First is that Iraqi plaintiffs
are seeking redress not in Iraqi court but in an American venue
and therefore the American courts do not have jurisdiction over
the matter. Second is that defendants were acting under the authority
of the American government and therefore can set forth the argument
that governmental immunity from civil damages should be extended
to them.
As to the first, American law
holds an interesting position. Under a statute enacted in the
1790's, called the Alien Tort Claims Act, claims for civil damages
by foreign citizens against American entities are permitted.
The statute was actually dormant until 1980 when it was revived
in the human rights context. Since then, courts around the country
with both Republican and Democratic appointed judges
have recognized that citizens of another country may bring certain
claims for damages in American courts. In the most recent instance
before the Supreme Court, in a case involving a Mexican citizen
who was abducted from Mexico by the DEA, the Supreme Court held
that under ATCA American courts did have jurisdiction over the
matter. However, the court went on to add that there were only
a select list of injuries for which the ATCA could be used and
kidnapping was not one of them. The Court's standard for determining
which kind of injury is covered by ATCA is to look at international
law from the 1790's. If an act today violates the laws of the
nations from the 1790's, then, presumably, there may be a claim
under ATCA. It seems fairly clear that in the 1790's while kidnapping
might not have been, torture was against the laws of nations.
Evidence for this comes from the various treaties between the
Western nations regarding prisoner exchanges, as well as a case
in the British courts where executives from the British East
India Company were found civilly liable for torts committed in
India upon Indian citizens.
The human rights lawyers in
this case will have far greater difficulty with removing the
"national security" cloak from the case. A quick look
at the recent arguments suggests that at every turn Plaintiffs
are forced to engage in detailed requests to view the smallest
of documents. Such delay tactics only assist CACI and Titan as
they take the case out of the public consciousness and deplete
the already meager resources that Plaintiffs command.
Whatever the result of the
litigation, it will have revealed for posterity the blatant relationship
between American corporations and actual torture.
Ali Eteraz is an essayist. His works have appeared
on Killing the Buddha, Identity Theory and Parabola. His eponymous
blog can be found at http://eteraz.wordpress.com.
There he will publish interviews
with attorneys and volunteers involved in this litigation as
well as periodic updates.
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