US jury awards former Abu Ghraib detainees $42 million in damages

The News

A US jury awarded $42 million in damages to three former detainees of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison Tuesday.

The jury had heard the case as a retrial after a different jury couldn’t agree on whether a Virginia-based military contractor was liable for the work of its civilian interrogators alongside the US army in Iraq during 2003 and 2004, decided after deliberations that CACI was indeed responsible for facilitating their torture and mistreatment.

The trials marked the first time a US jury heard claims by former Abu Ghraib detainees since photographs that showed detainees being mistreated — alongside smiling US military personnel — emerged in 2004, an incident that prompted international condemnation and ultimately led to the conviction of 11 US soldiers. None of the three plaintiffs in this case were in the photos, but their allegations of mistreatment at the prison were consistent with the images.

Lawyers for the former detainees did not explicitly allege that CACI’s interrogators participated in abuse, however they successfully argued that the company was liable even if they couldn’t prove direct involvement. CACI’s lawyers had argued liability lay with the US government.