20 years after Abu Ghraib photos, survivors tell their stories in court

Twenty years ago this month, photos of abused prisoners and smiling US soldiers guarding them at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were released, shocking the world.

Now, three survivors of Abu Ghraib will finally get their day in US court against the military contractor they hold responsible for their mistreatment.

The trial is scheduled to begin on Monday in the US District Court in Alexandria, and will be the first time that Abu Ghraib survivors can bring their claims of torture to a US jury, said Baher Azmy, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs.

The defendant in the civil suit, CACI, supplied the interrogators who worked at the prison.

The Virginia-based contractor denies any wrongdoing and has emphasised throughout 16 years of litigation that its employees are not alleged to have inflicted any abuse on any of the plaintiffs in the case.

The plaintiffs, though, seek to hold CACI responsible for setting the conditions that resulted in the torture they endured, citing evidence in government investigations that CACI contractors instructed military police to “soften up” detainees for their interrogations.

Retired Army Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led an investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal, is among those expected to testify. His inquiry concluded that at least one CACI interrogator should be held accountable for instructing military police to set conditions that amounted to physical abuse.

There is little dispute that the abuse was horrific.

The photos released in 2004 showed naked prisoners stacked into pyramids or dragged by leashes. Some photos had a soldier smiling and giving a thumbs up while posing next to a corpse, or detainees being threatened with dogs, or hooded and attached to electrical wires.

The plaintiffs cannot be identified in any of the infamous images, but their descriptions of mistreatment are unnerving.

Suhail Al Shimari has described sexual assaults and beatings during his two months at the prison. He was also electrically shocked and dragged around the prison by a rope tied around his neck.

Former Al-Jazeera reporter Salah Al-Ejaili said he was subjected to stress positions that caused him to vomit black liquid. He was also deprived of sleep, forced to wear women's underwear and threatened with dogs.

CACI, though, has said the US military is the institution that bears responsibility for setting the conditions at Abu Ghraib and that its employees weren't in a position to be giving orders to soldiers.

In court papers, lawyers for the contractor group have said the “entire case is nothing more than an attempt to impose liability on CACI PT because its personnel worked in a war zone prison with a climate of activity that reeks of something foul. The law, however, does not recognize guilt by association with Abu Ghraib.”

The case has bounced through the courts since 2008, and CACI has tried roughly 20 times to have it tossed out of court. The US Supreme Court in 2021 ultimately turned back CACI's appeal efforts and sent the case back to the district court for trial.