I used to be in highschool when on April 28, 2004, CBS Information first made public the disturbing images from the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. I do not bear in mind precisely how I felt then, besides that it was an extremely darkish second that shook everybody. That has stayed with me to at the present time.
Practically 20 years later, I discovered myself in courtroom wanting on the identical surprising images of males whose faces are hidden beneath crude hoods. However this time, the tortured males in these images had been neither nameless nor face. I watched one Abu Ghraib survivor testify from Iraq by way of video hyperlink and shook the hand of one other outdoors the courthouse, 20 minutes from the nation’s capital, the place life-changing choices had been made.
Two weeks earlier than the twentieth anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Al Shimari’s civil trial in opposition to CACI lastly started. I attended as an observer for the Middle for Victims of Torture, which seeks accountability for torture perpetrated by the USA.
This case, introduced by three Iraqi males – Suhail Najim Abdullah al-Shimari, Salah Hasan Nusaif al-Ejaili and Asa’advert Hamza Hanfoosh Zuba’e – is the one Abu Ghraib survivors’ case in opposition to a army contractor that has gone to trial. . .
The three males are suing CACI Worldwide Inc, a non-public army contractor, over the allegation that CACI personnel “engaged in a conspiracy to commit illegal conduct, together with torture and battle crimes at Abu Ghraib jail.” Since 2008, the corporate has tried to dismiss this case greater than 20 occasions.
The trial marks a major second within the authorized battle for justice and reparations for Abu Ghraib and, extra broadly, the US torture program. It represents the end result of the tireless efforts of victims themselves, human rights advocates, and authorized specialists to make clear the darkest facets of the USA’ “battle on terror.”
On the Middle for Victims of Torture, the place I work, we work together instantly with torture survivors, listening to them speak about what was accomplished to them and the way the torture affected their sense of security, confidence and self-identity. Torture consists of deliberately breaking the human being: thoughts, physique and spirit; It doesn’t finish when the acts finish. That is why it is essential to inform the story.
Within the courtroom, the plaintiffs gave harrowing accounts of their experiences at Abu Ghraib and the consequences they stay with 20 years later.
They instructed the courtroom the sorts of torture and humiliation to which they had been subjected each by army personnel and personal contractors. They mentioned long-lasting bodily ache and accidents, difficulties interacting with household, lack of significant relationships, and bother sleeping as a consequence of nightmares. They reported that they might not even make eye contact (a easy human act to see and be seen) due to the disgrace they felt for what had been accomplished to them.
Al-Ejaili, a journalist who used to work with Al Jazeera, testified how significant it was for him to inform his story: “Possibly it is like a type of remedy or treatment.”
In courtroom, Main Basic (Ret.) Antonio Taguba and Main Basic (Ret.) George Fay testified about their respective investigations into torture at Abu Ghraib. Basic Taguba’s 2004 investigation passed off earlier than the Abu Ghraib images had been made public and was initiated by the army following investigations by the Worldwide Committee of the Crimson Cross and the Military Prison Investigation Command. Basic Taguba concluded that “a number of detainees suffered incidents of sadistic, flagrant and mindless legal abuse” and that the “systematic and unlawful abuses… had been perpetrated deliberately.”
Basic Fay’s report, printed in August 2004, discovered that torture methods utilized to detainees included the usage of canines, nudity, humiliation and bodily abuse. He described torture, which included “direct bodily assaults, equivalent to hitting the detainees’ heads till they had been unconscious, sexual posing, and compelled participation in group masturbations.”
Each the Fay and Taguba investigations, and a subsequent one by the US Senate Armed Providers Committee in 2008, discovered that the atrocities dedicated at Abu Ghraib weren’t remoted. The horrors had been a part of the Bush administration’s “battle on terrorism” torture coverage and mirrored ways licensed by high officers, together with Protection Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A few of the torture practices had been delivered to Abu Ghraib from Guantanamo Bay and Bagram, a army base in Afghanistan, the place detainees had been additionally tortured.
Taguba and Fay’s experiences implicate CACI employees in abuses, equivalent to ways to “soften up” detainees earlier than interrogations. Considered one of them was Steve Stephanowicz, who, in keeping with inside CACI emails introduced in courtroom, was “NOT appropriate for an interrogator place” as he was “neither skilled nor certified.” In courtroom, Basic Taguba testified that Stephanowicz even tried to “intimidate” him throughout his investigation.
Regardless of this, Stephanowicz was promoted inside CACI and acquired a 48 p.c pay improve, a development additionally seen amongst these within the Bush administration who licensed torture.
The Fay report mentions nameless CACI employees bodily assaulting detainees and inserting them in unauthorized tense positions. One even boasted of “shaving a detainee and forcing him to put on purple girls’s underwear.”
What is exclusive about Abu Ghraib is that, in contrast to Guantanamo and different secret CIA prisons, the world has seen the atrocities that passed off there. And as we speak, via this trial, via the tales of those survivors, the world sees once more what America did. No senior authorities or army official has been held accountable for crimes dedicated by the USA. No sufferer has acquired compensation for the injury suffered day-after-day till her loss of life.
However this trial provides the chance to acquire some degree of justice. Survivors of torture have the precise to reparation, rehabilitation and compensation, all of which I hope these three males obtain. Whereas they are going to by no means get all of the justice they deserve, a verdict of their favor might present them with monetary compensation, in addition to recognition of their struggling and make CACI’s complicity public.
The combat for justice doesn’t finish with this case. There’s nonetheless a lot left to do.
Abu Ghraib and the Bagram detention heart had been formally closed in 2014, however Guantánamo stays open, with 30 males detained indefinitely in situations that will quantity to torture, in keeping with the United Nations. Efforts to shut have stalled regardless of the present US administration’s said intention to take action. Nevertheless, efforts proceed to shut the detention heart and search justice and reparations for victims of the US torture program.
The views expressed on this article are these of the creator and don’t essentially replicate the editorial place of Al Jazeera.
