Last week, as reported by the Associated Press and Reuters, lawyers in California filed a class action suit against several of the contractors working in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons. They’re suing under RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) and the Alien Torts Claims Act. The defendants are Titan, CACI, some of their subsidiaries, and three employees (Stephen Stephanowicz and John Israel of CACI, and Adel Nahkla of Titan) named in the Taguba report.
This is their full complaint. (It’s a long PDF; don’t open it if those break your computer.) I don’t know anything about the merits of their legal arguments—perhaps von does? I will just give a brief summary of the factual allegations.
There are six plaintiffs who are partially or fully identified by name, and two who are using pseudonyms. Most of the plaintiffs give specific information about where they were detained, and some give prisoner numbers. In one case, Time magazine obtained a copy of the plaintiff’s release order.
The specific, individualized charges are on pages 19-27 of the complaint. Several of the prisoners allege that they were sprayed with cold water in cold weather or dragged across the desert during the summer; forced to stay in stress positions and beaten or kicked if they fell or moved; kicked or beaten at other times; deprive of sleep, food and water to the point of collapse; and threatened and/or attacked by dogs.
One detainee says he was forced to observe his father being tortured to death. Another alleges that he was beaten with cables, and shown a picture of what appeared to be a 12-15 year old boy being molested by someone in U.S. uniform & threatened with the same treatment, when he refused to answer a question. Another says U.S. soldiers applied shocks to his genitals and denied him medical treatment afterwards.
There is one female plaintiff, identified only as “Jane Doe”. The complaint says that she is a 55 year old English teacher, whose husband was tortured to death in Abu Ghraib under Saddam Hussein. She alleges that she was detained incommunicado in a 6’ x 9’ cell, hooded so that she had difficulty breathing, deprived of food, water and “hygienic facilities,” handcuffed so as to cause skin lesions, threatened with guard dogs, and had her life and family members’ lives threatened.
One of the plaintiffs charges that he was electrocuted, beaten with iron skewers, had his toe nails pulled out, and was suspended from the ceiling. I should note, though, that his account seems less credible to me than the other detainees’. The charges are vaguer; his full name isn’t given nor are any biographical details; the location of his detention is not specified at all—not even “Abu Ghraib prison” or “Camp Buka”, let alone the specific tent or cell # that many of the other plaintiffs give. And the beginning of the complaint adds the legal disclaimer “on information and belief” to his charges, which it does not do for most of the plaintiffs.
Titan and CACI have denied the charges and call the lawsuit “frivolous”. As I said, I have no idea of its legal merits. As with the Arar lawsuit, getting to discovery would be an important step even if the plaintiffs lost in the end.
I’m going to blog on the Complaint after I’ve had a chance to digest it. There’s a lot here. Two thoughts:
(1) It could be that every thing the complaint says is true but there’s still no RICO liability here. (I.e., a motion under Rule 12(b)(6) might dispose of it.)
(2) I see major comity, forum non conveniens,* and absention (sometimes misleading called “The Colorodo River doctrine — actually, it’s a bit more complex than the Colorado River case) defenses here.
von
*Common-law FNC, which would not be preempted in this case by 1404’s venue transfer provisions.
Sorry: abstention. Slippery fingers.