"It's the right thing to
do," Rumsfeld said. "And it is my
intention to see that we do." Six years later, the US Army is unable to
document a single payment for prisoner abuse
at Abu Ghraib.
Nor can
the more than 250 Iraqis or their lawyers now seeking redress in US courts.
Their hopes for compensation may rest on a Supreme
Court decision this week.
The Army
says about 30 former Abu Ghraib prisoners are seeking compensation from the US
Army Claims Service. Those claims are still being investigated; many do not
involve inmate abuse.
The Army
said that US Forces-Iraq looked at its records and could not find any payments
to former detainees. The Army also cannot verify whether any such payments were
made informally through Iraqi leaders.
From the
budget years 2003 to 2006, the Defense Department paid $30.9 million to Iraqi
and Afghan civilians who were killed, injured, or incurred property damage due
to US or coalition forces' actions during combat. The Army has found no
evidence any of those payments were used to compensate victims of abuse at Abu
Ghraib.
So
instead of compensation, the legacy of the most infamous detainee abuse episode
from President George W. Bush's tenure is lawsuits, and the court battle
mirrors the Iraq war — a grinding, drawn-out conflict.
At the US
Supreme Court, the former detainees are asking the justices to step into a case
alleging that civilian interrogators and linguists conspired with soldiers to
abuse the prisoners. All the detainees, who allege they were held at Abu Ghraib
or one of the other 16 detention centers in Iraq, say they were eventually
released without any charges against them.
Their
case presents a fundamental legal issue: Can defense contractors working side
by side with military jailers be sued for claims arising in a war zone? The US
government is immune from suits arising from combatant activities of the
military during time of war.
The
ex-detainees are suing CACI International Inc. of Arlington, Va., and L-3
Services Inc. of New York, formerly called Titan Corp. of San Diego. Both
companies say the suits fail to link any of their employees to abuse.
The
Supreme Court considers the case in private Monday and could announce as early
as Tuesday whether it will take the case.
"It's
really outrageous that there hasn't been a widespread commitment to compensate
the clear victims of this abuse, and it's extremely troubling that the government
doesn't appear able to document any compensation for victims whatsoever,"
said Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights,
a private group overseeing lawsuits against the civilian contractors since
2004.
"The
US government seems to have failed miserably in securing at least one portion
of the accountability for these actions," he said.
Although
the US military used signs, pamphlets, broadcasts and word of mouth to let the
Iraqi public know how to make claims against US forces, "very few claims
appear to have been made" related to Abu Ghraib inmate abuse, Lt. Col.
Craig A. Ratcliff, an Army spokesman, told The Associated Press.
"We
believe there could be several reasons for this, including the cultural and
social stigma of having been detained or mistreated that could be a source of
embarrassment preventing a former detainee from coming forward," he said.
Ratcliff
said that just 31 requests for compensation filed with the US Army Claims
Service "could involve possible detention at Abu Ghraib" and that
many of the 31 involve allegations such as missing cash and lost personal items
rather than physical abuse. All 31 "are pending investigation and
action." Two views of Abu Ghraib abuse The detainees' allegations and
Rumsfeld's testimony on Capitol Hill on May 7, 2004, offer conflicting views of
what took place at Abu Ghraib.
The
suits, which seek unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, allege that
four prisoners died at Abu Ghraib from beatings and that employees of the defense
contractors, US soldiers, or both, were responsible. Among the hundreds of
allegations in the cases: -While detained at Abu Ghraib, two sisters were
forced by their captors to witness their detainee brother being beaten so
severely he died of his injuries several days later.
A young
prisoner at Abu Ghraib was forced to watch his detainee father being beaten
with guns in the head, back, stomach and genitals days before he died of those
injuries.
In
contrast, Rumsfeld's testimony about compensation was based on graphic
photographs leaked to the news media showing abuse inflicted on a relatively
small number of detainees during the night shift along Tier 1 at Abu Ghraib
from September to December in 2003.
Sworn
statements by 13 Abu Ghraib inmates which US Army investigators found credible
form a key piece of the first public US military report in 2004 on what took
place at the prison. At the time, Abu Ghraib was the largest detention facility
in Iraq, with 7,000 inmates.
One
detainee told investigators that his jailers "beat me so bad I lost
consciousness for an hour or so." A second prisoner said his assailant
"started beating me with the chair until the chair was broken. After that
they started choking me. ... I thought I was going to die." A military investigation
later in 2004 identified 44 alleged incidents of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib.
"The
practices that took place in that prison are abhorrent and they don't represent
America," Bush said.
Eleven US
soldiers were convicted of crimes at Abu Ghraib ranging from aggravated assault
to taking pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated. Five officers
were disciplined.
One Army
investigation found that three employees from CACI and one from Titan — their
names were withheld by the military — more likely than not engaged in abuse at
Abu Ghraib. No employee from either company was charged with a crime in
investigations by the US Justice Department. Nor did the US military stop the
companies from working for the government.
US courts
disagree over claims Regardless of whether the detainees' allegations or the
Bush administration's limited view of the abuses is more accurate, the suits
underscore a basic reality of the Iraq and Afghan wars: Tens of thousands of
civilian contractors work closely with soldiers.
That
closeness underpins the Abu Ghraib suits, but there are conflicting court
rulings on whether US law protects the contractors as well as the government
from suits.
The
Supreme Court often resolves disagreements between lower courts, but it's far from
certain the justices will step into the Abu Ghraib cases now.
They
could adopt the Obama administration's view, expressed four months ago in a
case unrelated to prisoner abuse, that the whole issue of liability of private
contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan "would benefit greatly from further
percolation" in the lower courts.
In the
case the justices are being asked to review, the US Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the detainee suits against CACI and
Titan a year ago by a 2-1 vote.
Like
Rumsfeld, two of the appeals court judges pointed to the US Army as the place
to go for compensation.
"The
US Army Claims Service has confirmed that it will compensate detainees who
establish legitimate claims for relief under the Foreign Claims Act,"
wrote appeals judge Laurence Silberman. Therefore, the detainees "will not
be totally bereft of all remedies for injuries sustained at Abu Ghraib,"
added Silberman, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan. Silberman was joined
by appeals judge Brett Kavanaugh, a George W. Bush appointee.
The
dissenting judge, Merrick Garland, said detainees have no legal rights under
the Foreign Claims Act. That law "merely authorizes designated officials
to make — or not make — certain payments as a matter of their unreviewable
discretion," wrote Garland, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.
Six
months before the appeals court ruling in Washington, a federal judge in
Alexandria, Va., ruled that four former Abu Ghraib inmates can sue CACI for
alleged abuse. That case is now in the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in
Richmond.
