by MAHA HILAL
Survivors exposed the violence of the “war on terror,” refusing to let it be relegated to the dustbin of history.
“My life before and after [Abu Ghraib] were very different,” Salah Hasan Nusaif Al-Ejaili testified in a Virginia courtroom on Monday, April 15, the beginning of the trial in the case of Al-Shimari v. CACI. Al-Ejaili, one of the three plaintiffs in the case, was an Al Jazeera journalist who was detained in November 2003 and held in the Iraq prison’s “hard site,” which was reserved for “high-value” detainees. On the witness stand, Al-Ejaili recounted scenes of horrific torture, including having his arms handcuffed behind him and attached to a pipe, being held naked in freezing conditions, and as a result of the torture, developing stomach pain so severe that at one point, black liquid started to come out of his mouth. After his release from Abu Ghraib in February 2004, Al-Ejaili described having many psychological problems, familial problems, losing confidence in himself and others, and trouble eating and sleeping.
Taking the witness stand virtually from Iraq, another survivor, Asa’ad Hamza Hanfoosh Al-Zuba’e, who was held for a year at Abu Ghraib, also detailed brutal torture at the prison. Through a Zoom screen in the courtroom, Al-Zuba’e revealed in detail some of the brutal torture that he was exposed to, including forced nudity and being forced to play with his genitals, having a black hood placed over his head and being dragged, getting cold water poured on him, and being told that “they were going to f**k him.”
If anyone — including the U.S. government and the corporation at the center of the lawsuit, CACI — thought this chapter of the “war on terror” would be easy to relegate to history as “mistakes” of the past, these harrowing testimonies revived the visceral images and stories of torture at Abu Ghraib, bringing them vividly into our present and the courtroom as if no time at all had elapsed.
As a Muslim and Arab professor, scholar and researcher who has written extensively about the targeting of Muslims in the war on terror, and in my role as executive director at Muslim Counterpublics Lab, I attended several days of the Al-Shimari v. CACI trial. Bearing witness to the survivors’ testimonies was powerful, including what was left unspoken: that their fight for accountability over the course of the last 16 years was not a matter of proving their humanity or appealing to the morality of those who perpetrated or played a role in the harm against them — but instead, it was an unequivocal demand for justice.
Abu Ghraib Exposed
Exactly 20 years ago today, CBS’s “60 Minutes II” broadcasted a segment on torture at Abu Ghraib, revealing for the first time the grotesque images of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to brutal torture, including being stripped and forced on top of each other into a pyramid shape, being tied and dragged on a leash naked, and being threatened with dogs.
Upon the release of the photos and in the midst of public outrage in the United States and across the globe, statements made by President George W. Bush and other administration officials quickly led to much of the U.S. populace believing that this case of torture was an anomaly.
Shortly after the photos came out, Secretary of State Colin Powell — who was pivotal to the U.S.’s efforts to justify its war on Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction — told foreign leaders in response to the torture at Abu Ghraib that they should “watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing. Watch what a nation of values and character, a nation that believes in justice, does to right this kind of wrong. Watch how a nation such as ours will not tolerate such actions.” Regardless of Powell’s emphatic pleas for others to see the goodness of the U.S., anyone “watching America” would have distinctly observed one thing: the lack of accountability for Bush and other administration officials who condoned, facilitated and created the legal frameworks for torture. While the memories and trauma of torture continued to haunt Abu Ghraib survivors in the two decades since, federal government officials have long since gotten off the hook thanks to immunity provided them in the Federal Tort Claims Act.
The U.S. government, however, understood that a complete dereliction of accountability would not bode well for a country determined to rehabilitate its image as a champion of human rights. As such, in 2006, 11 U.S. soldiers were convicted of criminal charges based on their conduct at Abu Ghraib prison.
Corporate Complicity in Torture
CACI is a Virginia-based corporation that provides expertise and technology to various government agencies. The corporation describes itself as having “unwavering character” and prides itself on its standards of ethics and values such as responsibility and accountability. Now, the victims’ lawsuit is making that accountability real.
After the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq, CACI was hired to conduct interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison. Allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison from the International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International followed soon after the prison was taken over by Americans. On January 31, 2004, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba was ordered to conduct an informal investigation into the Army’s 800th Military Police Brigade’s detention and internment operations, including allegations of detainee abuse. Taguba’s report was released in May 2004 alongside the images of the torture of Abu Ghraib. One of his conclusions aptly described what the pictures so callously revealed — namely, that “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.” Unfortunately for CACI, its interrogators were named and implicated in the reports of abuse. Later in 2004, a report similarly calling attention to CACI — the Fay Jones report — cited CACI employees engaged in abusive behavior.
Even though the federal government managed to evade accountability, CACI would not be so lucky in its claims for derivative immunity. In 2008, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a civil suit in what would eventually become Al-Shimari v. CACI that alleged that interrogators employed by the corporation conspired with military police to torture detainees in order to “soften them up” for interrogations.
“The Abu Ghraib Effect”
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