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<h1 id="DetailedTitle"> Iraqis awarded $5m over Abu Ghraib abuse </h1>
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<td class="Tmp_hSpace10"> <small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/01/2013193300675421.html">http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/01/2013193300675421.html</a></small><br>
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<p><br>
A US defence contractor whose subsidiary was accused of conspiring to
torture detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has paid
$5.28m to 71 former inmates held there between 2003 and 2007.</p>
<p>Tuesday’s settlement marks the first successful effort by
lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other US-run detention
centres to collect money from a US defence contractor in lawsuits
alleging torture.</p>
<p>Another contractor, CACI, is expected to go to trial over
similar allegations this summer.</p>
<p>The payments were disclosed in a document that Engility
Holdings Inc filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission two
months ago but which has gone essentially unnoticed.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, a lawyer for the ex-detainees, Baher Azmy, said
that each of the 71 Iraqis received a portion of the settlement.</p>
<p>Azmy declined to say how the money was distributed among them.
He said there was an agreement to keep details of the settlement
confidential.</p>
<p>“Private military contractors played a serious but often
under-reported role in the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib,” said Azmy, the
legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights.</p>
<p>“We are pleased that this settlement provides some
accountability for one of those contractors and offers some measure of
justice for the victims.”</p>
<p>Eric Ruff, Engility's director of corporate communications,
said the company does not comment on matters involving litigation.</p>
<p><strong>'Criminal conduct'</strong></p>
<p>The ex-detainees filed the lawsuit in federal court in
Greenbelt, Maryland, in 2008.</p>
<p>L-3 Services "permitted scores of its employees to participate
in torturing and abusing prisoners over an extended period of time
throughout Iraq", the lawsuit stated.</p>
<p>The company "willfully failed to report L-3 employees'
repeated assaults and other criminal conduct by its employees to the
United States or Iraq authorities".</p>
<p>The defendant in the lawsuit, L-3 Services Inc, now an
Engility subsidiary, provided translators to the US military in Iraq.</p>
<p>In its defence four years ago against the lawsuit, L-3
Services said lawyers for the Iraqis alleged that there were no facts
to support the conspiracy accusation.</p>
<p>Sixty-eight of the Iraqis "do not even attempt to allege the
identity of their alleged abuser" and two others provide only “vague
assertions”, the company said then.</p>
<p>A military investigation in 2004 identified 44 alleged
incidents of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib.</p>
<p>No employee from L-3 Services was charged with a crime in
investigations by the US Justice Department. Nor did the US military
stop the company from working for the government.</p>
<p>The Abu Ghraib prison scandal erupted during President George
W Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 when graphic photographs taken by
soldiers at the scene were leaked to the news media.</p>
<p>They showed naked inmates piled on top of each other in a
prison cell block, inmates handcuffed to their cell bars and hooded and
wired for electric shock, among other shocking scenes.</p>
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