A defense contractor that supplied interrogators to the U.S. Army at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is liable for the abuse suffered by three Iraqi men who were detained there two decades ago, a federal jury found on Tuesday. It awarded each of the men $3 million in compensation and another $11 million in punitive damages.
The verdict came in the second trial of the case. The first ended in a mistrial earlier this year when a jury was unable to reach a verdict.
Both trials took place before Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia.
The first jury heard testimony directly from the three plaintiffs — Salah Hasan Al-Ejaili, Suhail Al Shimari, and Asa’ad Al-Zuba’e. The three men said they were subjected to harsh and degrading treatment at the hands of their captors, including threats against family members, being chained to pipes overnight, and being forced to strip naked and masturbate. Some of the military police who were involved with abusing the men were seen in photos that became public and made Abu Ghraib a scandal in 2004.
In court, the defense contractor, CACI International, argued that there was no evidence to show that its employees were directly involved in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. But the jury agreed with the plaintiffs that CACI was liable because it had supplied the interrogators who instructed the military police officers to “soften up” the detainees.
The verdict is a milestone in more than a decade of litigation between the three men and CACI International, based in Virginia, and its subsidiary CACI Premier Technology.
The men were represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human rights organization, and by Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, a law firm based in New York City.
J. William Koegel Jr., CACI’s general counsel, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment about the verdict and about whether CACI planned to appeal.
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