Janine Jackson interviewed the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Baher Azmy about the Abu Ghraib lawsuit for the August 18, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
New York Times (8/8/23)
Janine Jackson: Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a report on the Arlington National Cemetery burial of Ian Fishback, a former Special Forces officer who, as the Times said, “dared to challenge the Army on its soldiers’ sustained abuse of Iraqi and Afghan men in their custody.”
Fishback’s testimony “unequivocally characterizing the soldiers’ behavior as torture,” the paper explained, “shattered the Pentagon’s insistence that the torture in [Abu Ghraib] was an isolated case,” but it did lead to personal harm and hardship for Fishback.
Of course, the actions that Fishback was moved to denounce had horrific and enduring impacts on many other people, starting with the victims of the torture.
The Times has unfortunately been not particularly interested in the stubborn insistence of those people in having their case heard. One piece in March noted that opponents of the Iraq War say that “the shame of the American abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib…have not been forgotten by history,” but it’s disheartening that that sentence appeared within a piece centered on how George W. Bush “doesn’t second-guess himself on Iraq.”
The ongoing case against military contractor CACI Premier Technology, Inc., hired to provide interrogation services at Abu Ghraib, is a chance for reporters to prevent our forgetting.
The Center for Constitutional Rights has been leading that case, which a federal judge has just said can move forward, since June 2008. We’re joined now by phone by Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Baher Azmy.
Baher Azmy: Thank you for having me.
JJ: If you would ground us, first of all, with some context: This case is against a military contractor, not against the US government per se, and it’s about just a handful of plaintiffs. It’s not the be-all, end-all on the horrors of Abu Ghraib, much less the invasion and the war, but it is the last case standing, and it carries meaning, within itself and beyond itself, would you say?
BA: Yeah, that’s right. This is actually the third of three cases we brought on behalf of Iraqi victims of torture by the US government and private military contractors in Iraq and Abu Ghraib.
One case was thrown out by the DC Federal Court of Appeals, led by Kavanaugh, with a dissent from then-Judge Garland; a second case on behalf of 71 individuals brought against a translation company, L-3 Services, that settled favorably; and this, the third, is brought on behalf of three remaining plaintiffs, three victims of torture at the so-called “hard site” at Abu Ghraib, where all of the depictions of torture we have seen were revealed.
And it’s very challenging to sue the US military for torture, but US generals did an investigation of the torture at Abu Ghraib and identified that private military contractors, including CACI, had a preeminent role.
CACI sent a number of untrained individuals to serve as interrogators, under a very profitable $35 million contract. And as the reports and the evidence revealed, in the command vacuum that occurred at Abu Ghraib, it was CACI interrogators who were telling military police, including people you might recognize if you’re old enough—Lynndie England, Ivan Frederick and Charles Graner—to “soften up” detainees via torture for later interrogation by CACI.
So this seeks accountability against the private military contractor for actions that US service members spent considerable time in a military brig for, and it seeks to close that accountability gap, and hold this profit-making enterprise accountable for its clear role in contributing to the torture and abuse of our plaintiffs.
JJ: I don’t know if it matters to say at this point that prisoners in Abu Ghraib were not criminals—these were not people who were charged and convicted—but maybe that’s worth mentioning here.
BA: Correct. And there are clear, clear duties under the laws of war with respect [to] what is called cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment. And, notably, the judge in this case has found sufficient evidence that CACI was a direct conspirator, aided and abetted the actual torture of our clients, so enough evidence that a jury could find them liable, and that’s what we’re hoping will be the next step in front of a United States jury.
CounterSpin (5/27/16)
JJ: CACI says, as I understand it, that since the United States would have immunity in this case, well, then, we were working for them, so we also have immunity. What do you have to say? I remember an interview with deeply missed CCR president Michael Ratner, explaining in 2004, that this idea that torture isn’t torture came in with US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and things went south at that point.
But that’s CACI’s line, that since we’re acting as the government, we therefore have immunity against these charges?
BA: Yeah, it’s interesting. The subtext of this is a really disturbing pattern among all private military contractors, which I think is seeking precisely this: Even though they act for profit, have no sovereign responsibilities, are in no way politically accountable, democratically accountable, they want to assume the same benefits as the government, as if CACI was a sovereign entity rather than a profit-making entity. That seems like a terrifying notion for me.
And the subtext is, I think, ultimately, from a range of private military contractors, to get the law and the police to fulfill a kind of Erik Prince–ian vision, where private military contractors can go into war spaces and enjoy the same immunity as the United States government.
And so far, the courts have plainly resisted that: You’re not allowed to assume the immunity of the United States government if you yourself have broken the law, even as a contractor.
And the courts have rejected CACI’s argument, building on what John Yoo and Dick Cheney have said—that these are not legal questions, they’re political questions, that they’re out of the jurisdiction of the courts, what we choose to do with prisoners during wartime. And the court flatly rejected that, and said they can be accountable for torture, even if they were participating with the military.
JJ: All right, then. Well, for many people, Abu Ghraib is a series of horrific photographs, and maybe the government’s efforts to suppress them, the media’s release of them, and then a kind of collective gasp—”shocking the conscience,” we heard.
But then we got the sense, vaguely speaking, that since we’ve had our conscience shocked, we’ve addressed it, and so let’s all move on from that difficult time.
But if no real deep-going, up-to-the-top accountability happens, aren’t we just setting ourselves up for the next, “Oh my gosh, that’s terrible” that’s carried out in our name?
Baher Azmy: “The problem with not holding high-level officials to account is these abuses get replicated and indeed escalated.” (image: Democracy Now!, 8/8/23)
BA: I really quite agree, as someone who’s been heavily involved and early involved in the responses to the human rights crisis created by the Bush administration and the lawlessness there. I draw a connection between the kind of soft authoritarianism of the Bush administration, and the sanctioned lawlessness and demand for impunity and subverting US institutions and constraints on executive power, to the kind of hard authoritarianism that the Trump administration embraced.
I mean, should we really be surprised by the Muslim ban that Trump escalated, given what the Bush administration tried and largely got away with? Should we be surprised with lawyers, like John Yoo in the torture context and John Eastman in the insurrection context, trying to sanction or legitimize, under law, subverting American institutions?
I think precisely the problem with not holding high-level officials to account is these abuses get replicated and indeed escalated.
JJ: Well, we’re going to end on that important note. We’ve been speaking with Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. You can track their work, including on this case, which is not closed but is going forward, at CCRJustice.org. Baher Azmy, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin
BA: Thank you very much.
The post ‘CACI Aided and Abetted the Torture of Our Clients’ appeared first on FAIR.
This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.
Janine Jackson | Radio Free (2023-08-24T15:06:14+00:00) ‘CACI Aided and Abetted the Torture of Our Clients’ – CounterSpin interview with Baher Azmy on Abu Ghraib lawsuit. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/24/caci-aided-and-abetted-the-torture-of-our-clients-counterspin-interview-with-baher-azmy-on-abu-ghraib-lawsuit/
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