A US jury has awarded $42m (£33m) to 3 former detainees of Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib jail, holding a Virginia-based defence contractor accountable for contributing to their abuse twenty years in the past.
The decision in opposition to CACI Premier Expertise comes from the second trial of this case. The primary led to a mistrial in spring after a jury was unable to achieve a choice.
The court docket heard instantly from plaintiffs Suhail Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili and Asa’advert Al-Zubae, who first filed the case in 2008.
They described beatings, sexual abuse, compelled nudity and different merciless therapy by the hands of their jailers.
CACI equipped interrogators to the US Military on the jail west of Baghdad. In court docket, attorneys for the contractor argued that its workers weren’t instantly concerned within the abuse, which was carried out by army police.
However the jury sided with the plaintiffs and their claims that CACI was nonetheless liable, as a result of the interrogators they equipped had instructed the army police to “soften up” the detainees.
CACI stated in an announcement that it had been made a scapegoat.
“To be clear: no CACI worker has ever been charged – criminally, civilly, or administratively – on this matter,” the corporate stated.
The landmark verdict reportedly marks the primary time a civilian contractor has been held legally accountable for the degrading therapy of detainees at Abu Ghraib.
The jury awarded plaintiffs Mr al-Shimari, a center faculty headmaster, Mr al-Ejaili, a journalist, and Mr al-Zubae, a fruit vendor, $3m every in compensatory damages and $11m every in punitive damages.
“I’ve waited a very long time for this present day,” Mr al-Ejaili stated in an announcement after the decision. “This victory is a shining gentle for everybody who has been oppressed and a robust warning to any firm or contractor practising completely different types of torture and abuse.”
Tons of of males had been arrested and held at Abu Ghraib by US forces after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In 2004, disturbing photographs from the jail had been leaked, together with one displaying a soldier pulling a unadorned inmate on a canine leash. The images incited widespread condemnation.
Eleven US troopers had been convicted of breaking army legal guidelines, however many acquired sentences of a only a few years. The final remaining soldier in jail convicted within the case was launched in August 2011.
