I’ve just started delving into the recent filings in the Abu Ghraib RICO lawsuit and, man, they’re fascinating. (Whether they’ll be fascinating to a lay audience, however, remains to be seen.) I’ll have a more fulsome post later on.
Happy weekend, all.
Update: For Francis, here’s a copy of Defendant Titan Corporation’s Memorandum in Support of its Motion to Dismiss. (Warning: Large file.) They kind of flub their second-tier RICO enterprise argument (more on this later), but you can start to get a feeling for their defense. Frankly, Titan’s arguments are (by and large) pretty persuasive to me.
I also plan to comment on the Plaintiffs’ attempts to shut down a copy-cat lawsuit in the District of Columbia (there can only be one, doncha know) and Plaintiffs’ attempt to enjoin one of Titan’s co-defendants, which contains a number of explosive allegations against Titan and the other defendants. Katherine notes one in comments to this post.
hey, where’s the link? some of us are law geeks too.
Francis
Oh, this part’s definitely of interest to the general public.
From the Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Support of the Injunction:
[26 lines of posting rules violations deleted.]
You can download the documents here.
Here’s the text of Akheel’s declaration:
“I, Shereef Akeel, hereby declare under penalty of perjury as follows.
1. I am a partner in the law firm of Melamed, Dailey & Akeel P.C. I have been practicing law in Michigan since 1996. I serve as counsel to Plaintiffs in the above-captioned litigation.
2. In connection with my role as counsel, I traveled to Iraq on August 6, 2004, and returned to the United States on August 21, 2004. During my time in Iraq I personally interviewed three family members who were arrested from their home in Bhagdad [sic] at approximately three am on or about JUly 12, 2004 and released without charge on July 25, 2004.
3. One was a boy who was born on February 18, 1989. He described the arresting official as a blonde American with a goatee who was wearing military clothing.
4. The boy was hooded, taken to prison, and placed in a wooden structure. He was prevented from eating, drinking water, sitting, or sleeping. He described being sexually abused by Americans who placed their fingers in his anus.
5. The second was the boy’s brother, a young man who was born on May 9, 1986. This young man was stripped naked, called names, and prevented from eating and sleeping.
7[sic]. The third was the uncle to the boy and young man. He was born on July 18, 1984. The uncle was stripped naked, threatened with death, forced to stand for long periods of time, and physically prevented from sleeping.
9[sic]. The uncle was interrogated by an American in civilian clothes with Asian features. The interregator threatened to torture him and rape his sister.
10. The room in which he was interrogated had electric cables handing [sic] on the walls. There was a sign saying “Admit it” in Arabic.
11. He described the facility as being the American-run detention center near the Bhagdad [sic] airport.
12. In addition to these three persons who I spoke with directly, I have learned that other Iraqis report being tortured in the summer of 2004, which is months after February 26, 2004, the date General Toguba [sic] submitted his report and months after April 28, 2004, the date Sixty Minutes aired the photographs of the Abu Ghraib abuse.
13. The three persons who were abused are willing to travel to the United States to testify ata hearing on Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunciton.”
Katherine —
Technical point. Explosive though these allegations are, they’re (at best) a summary of hearsay by plaintiffs’ counsel. (Paragraph 12 is essentially useless.) Although hearsay can be admissible at a preliminary injunction hearing, it’s usually given far less weight.
Yeah, I doubt they’ll affect the lawsuit, but I am surprised the press didn’t pick up on them. Well, kind of surprised. I mean, obviously we have no way to know if they’re true, but I can’t say they’re implausible.
Am I correct in thinking that the most plausible legal remedy for whatever the contractors have done would be a criminal charge under the torture statute? Not that that will ever ever ever happen with the current Justice Department. (And since the eyewitnesses aren’t in the U.S. you’d more or less need pictures or video to prove guilt.)
“I’ll have a more fulsome post later on.”
Um, wouldn’t you rather avoid that?
I’m probably missing something.
“[26 lines of posting rules violations deleted.]”
I’m unclear how productive this was, since I never would have bothered to read them otherwise.
I’m also unclear that posting rules should cover up allegations of war crimes. It’s your blog, you guys, of course, and refusing to post war crimes allegations is certainly an option. I gather that if I posted Holocaust facts, I’d be deleted. This goes into interesting ground that I’m not sure I’d want to defend, but that’s just me.
I heartily agree with having posting rules. I’m not clear I’d want them to cover up actual facts. To make a perhaps overly-literal connection, as implied by the above, if I posted some details of the Holocaust, and you deleted them, would you be guilty of Holocaust denial?
I realize that’s an extremely flammatory question, and I certainly don’t mean it to be taken in any of the number of harsher ways possible, but I raise it as a simple, genuine, question of the implications of this. That’s all, and no offense intended.
I think those might have been more about Katherine’s reactions to the crimes alleged than descriptions of said crimes, but that’s just a guess.
Mark is correct but Gary also has a point–it was sort of a cop-out. I didn’t think I could write anything coherent or accurate about my response to those allegations just then.
It’s just…I don’t consider myself very naive. I spend a lot of time, maybe too much time, learning about and researching these issues. But for everything I knew about the Arar case and the abuses in the Brooklyn MDC, I was shocked when the Abu Ghraib photos came out. And after everything about Abu Ghraib I was shocked by the torture memos. And after the memos I was shocked by the allegations of severe abuse at Guantanamo (I thought there was some bad stuff happening, but not the extent that was alleged–I thought there was too much press attention and we had much better control than in Iraq).
And after everything I am still shocked that this may be happening in Iraq right now.
Belle Waring said a month or two ago, “I keep thinking that my estimation of the administration’s competence and good will has reached rock bottom, when a new trapdoor opens and I fall into some yet ranker underground oubliette.” That’s sort of the feeling, though it’s not only the administration that’s to blame for this.