[Ppnews] Corporate Torture in Iraq

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/eteraz10112006.html

October 11, 2006


The Forgotten Conspiracy


Corporate Torture in Iraq

By ALI ETERAZ

In 2003, Haider Muhsin Saleh, was living in 
Dearborn Michigan. A former opponent of Saddam 
Hussein, he had once been imprisoned and tortured 
by Saddam's secret police in the Abu Ghraib 
prison in Iraq. Upon being released he had fled 
to Sweden and become a Swedish citizen. When the 
Hussein regime fell, Mr. Saleh heeded the United 
States' call for expatriates to return to and 
rebuild Iraq. He did so with his own funds. Upon 
his arrival in September of 2003 he was detained 
and sent to the same Abu Ghraib prison where he 
had been previously tortured by Saddam Hussein. 
Instead of getting a chance to rebuild his 
country he became prisoner #151138 and was subjected to "interrogation."

Mr. Saleh's genitals were roped to those of other 
prisoners; his penis stretched with a rope and 
beaten with a stick; his own semen poured on his 
head; his naked body poured cold water upon it in 
the dead of winter; his naked body shocked with 
an electric stick; his neck wrapped with a belt 
which allowed him to be dragged; his head beaten 
with a pistol and slammed against a wall; his 
anus probed; his body urinated upon. Yet this 
"interrogation" was different than the others. It 
was conducted not by soldiers but average 
American citizens, serving as contractors with 
major American corporations, CACI and Titan.

In discussions about the corporate beneficiaries 
of the War in Iraq, prominent companies like 
Halliburton are discussed often. What remains 
under-reported and under-appreciated is the fact 
that this war has afforded a vast collection of 
corporations to reap the benefits of lucrative 
government contracts. A number of such companies 
are involved in supervising, maintaining, and 
providing support for the numerous prisons in 
Iraq in the areas of interrogation, interpretation, and translation.

In 2004, a major Philadelphia law firm, the 
Center For Constitutional Rights, the University 
of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago School 
of Law, and a handful of volunteers a group of 
lawyers in the United States brought a civil suit 
on behalf of Mr. Saleh and the hundreds of others 
Iraqi prisoners abused and tortured by American 
contractors working for CACI and Titan. The 
thirty one count complaint accused CACI and Titan 
of a whole host of common law torts (such as 
assault and battery), as well as violations of 
international human rights, and a RICO (Racketeer 
Influenced & Corrupt Organizations ACT) 
conspiracy. The essential theory of the case was 
that CACI and Titan had a financial motive to 
increase the amount of interrogation they 
conducted. The longer the "interrogations" went 
the more they got paid. By 2004, Titan was 
earning 96% of its revenue from government contracts.

The 67 page complaint contains detailed 
descriptions of the torture suffered by some of 
the other named plaintiffs. One Haj Ali was hung 
from a ceiling while made and shocked with 
electric pulses. Umer Abdul Mutalib was dragged 
until he went unconscious. Jasim al-Nidawi's 
private parts were attacked by dogs. Other 
detainees were stripped naked and put in a room 
with a naked female detainee who had a mesh bag 
on her face and was screaming. The complaint also 
alleges that one of the private contractors raped 
a fourteen year old girl, and provides evidence 
that there may have been a rape room set up in 
the prison. It is important to recognize that all 
of these events were carried out by employees of 
American companies who were not part of the 
military. Significant amount of the information 
upon which the complaint was based came from the 
military's own Fay and Taguba reports. Without 
those reports it is unlikely that the world would 
have known about the abuses committed by American private contractors.

At the current time the litigation is in the 
"discovery" stages in Federal Court in the 
District of Columbia . There are two major 
hurdles for the lawyers representing the torture 
victims. First is that Iraqi plaintiffs are 
seeking redress not in Iraqi court but in an 
American venue and therefore the American courts 
do not have jurisdiction over the matter. Second 
is that defendants were acting under the 
authority of the American government and 
therefore can set forth the argument that 
governmental immunity from civil damages should be extended to them.

As to the first, American law holds an 
interesting position. Under a statute enacted in 
the 1790's, called the Alien Tort Claims Act, 
claims for civil damages by foreign citizens 
against American entities are permitted. The 
statute was actually dormant until 1980 when it 
was revived in the human rights context. Since 
then, courts around the country ­ with both 
Republican and Democratic appointed judges ­ have 
recognized that citizens of another country may 
bring certain claims for damages in American 
courts. In the most recent instance before the 
Supreme Court, in a case involving a Mexican 
citizen who was abducted from Mexico by the DEA, 
the Supreme Court held that under ATCA American 
courts did have jurisdiction over the matter. 
However, the court went on to add that there were 
only a select list of injuries for which the ATCA 
could be used and kidnapping was not one of them. 
The Court's standard for determining which kind 
of injury is covered by ATCA is to look at 
international law from the 1790's. If an act 
today violates the laws of the nations from the 
1790's, then, presumably, there may be a claim 
under ATCA. It seems fairly clear that in the 
1790's while kidnapping might not have been, 
torture was against the laws of nations. Evidence 
for this comes from the various treaties between 
the Western nations regarding prisoner exchanges, 
as well as a case in the British courts where 
executives from the British East India Company 
were found civilly liable for torts committed in India upon Indian citizens.

The human rights lawyers in this case will have 
far greater difficulty with removing the 
"national security" cloak from the case. A quick 
look at the recent arguments suggests that at 
every turn Plaintiffs are forced to engage in 
detailed requests to view the smallest of 
documents. Such delay tactics only assist CACI 
and Titan as they take the case out of the public 
consciousness and deplete the already meager resources that Plaintiffs command.

Whatever the result of the litigation, it will 
have revealed for posterity the blatant 
relationship between American corporations and actual torture.

Ali Eteraz is an essayist. His works have 
appeared on Killing the Buddha, Identity Theory 
and Parabola. His eponymous blog can be found at 
<http://eteraz.wordpress.com/>http://eteraz.wordpress.com.

There he will publish interviews with attorneys 
and volunteers involved in this litigation as well as periodic updates.


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