Three Iraqi men could bring CACI, a military contractor, to justice for the government contractor’s alleged role in Abu Ghraib abuses, The Intercept reports. The case, brought by three men detained at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, went to trial for on Wednesday, for the second time. The plaintiffs accuse CACI, which was hired by the U.S. government to provide interrogation services, of contributing to the torture of detainees at the Iraqi prison. The three Iraqi men — a journalist, a middle school principal, and a fruit vendor — spoke in court via video conference earlier this year about their experience being threatened with dogs, subjected to electric shocks, and stripped of their clothing. Asa’ad Hamza Hanfoosh Al-Zuba’e, who was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib from 2003 until 2004, said that he believed people who undressed him and touched his genitals were civilian officers based on their clothing. “I was heavily embarrassed. I was crying, I was screaming,” he told the jury. Al-Zuba’e also accused civilian officers of threatening to rape his wife.
Following 16 years of legal wrangling — and more than 20 attempts by CACI to dismiss the case — the new trial began before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Wednesday, picking up the case after the first jury deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial in April. The trial is expected to last for four to five days. Images of smiling American soldiers posing next to abused detainees at Abu Ghraib shocked the world in the mid-2000s, but the first trial’s proceedings in April marked the first time that an American jury directly heard claims brought by people held at the notorious prison. The plaintiffs, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed a lawsuit in 2008 under the Alien Tort Statute. This law allows noncitizens to bring cases involving clear violations of international law, such as torture, to an American federal court when there’s a substantial connection to the U.S. Even though the Supreme Court has narrowed the scope of this law multiple times, the case against CACI has survived.