Defense contractors face Iraq torture suit (Trial Lawyers at it again)

UPI ^ | 7-27-04 | SHAUN WATERMAN

[Indy Pendance]

WASHINGTON, July 27 (UPI) -- A group of trial lawyers Tuesday filed a lawsuit against two U.S. defense contractors on behalf of five Iraqis who were detained at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

The suit alleges that four of the Iraqis were "unlawfully tortured by agents or employees" of the two companies working at the jail. The fifth plaintiff is the widow of an Iraqi who is said to have died after maltreatment at their hands.

The two companies -- Arlington, Va.-based CACI Inc. and San Diego-based Titan Inc. -- vigorously deny the charges. A statement from CACI called the suit "ambulance chasing." Titan's Vice President of Corporate Communications Ralph "Wil" Williams told United Press International that the charges were "completely baseless," pointing out that Titan supplied only translators, not interrogators, and that the company "has never had control over prisoners or how they were handled."

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, cites the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, which grants the federal district courts "original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." A tort is a wrong or injustice occasioning damage.

For nearly 200 years the law was more or less in abeyance, Glenn Hendrix, an attorney expert in international litigation, told United Press International. "It was used maybe three times before 1980," he said.

But in that year it was successfully used to sue a Paraguayan police official, and for the next decade and a half the law was regularly used against police and prison officials who had tortured, murdered or otherwise violated international law.

Then in 1995, Hendrix said, the law was used against a high-ranking Bosnian Serb official. Because the Bosnian Serb entity was not a state, the success of that case opened what critics fear will eventually be a floodgate of cases brought against private corporations that allegedly took part in or directed abuse.

In an effort to close that gate, the administration recently argued before the Supreme Court that the law was effectively null and void. The court did not accept its argument, but legal analysts remain divided about the extent to which the ruling put a trammel on the efforts of human-rights lawyers and other activists to use the law against corporations like Unocal in Myanmar or Shell Oil in Nigeria.

"There are about 20 cases out there," said Hendrix. "Some have survived motions to dismiss or motions for summary judgment. None have been successful yet."

The lawyers who filed Tuesday's suit -- including a partner of high-profile criminal defense attorney Johnny Cochran -- also argue that because CACI and Titan conduct lawful business while "engaged in an ongoing, multi-year pattern of criminal conduct," they are liable under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.

The suit alleges that the Iraqis -- all of whom were eventually released without charge -- were subjected to beatings, starvation, so-called stress positions, prolonged nakedness, exposure to extreme cold and were threatened with dogs. One man says he was urinated on, and another says he witnessed a U.S. soldier raping a female inmate in a neighboring cell.

Michael Hourigan, an Australian lawyer who traveled to Iraq to interview the plaintiffs, told UPI that the four men who had been detained at Abu Ghraib said they regularly heard the cries of women and boys being raped.

"The people I interviewed clearly had symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder," said Hourigan, who worked for the U.N. war-crimes tribunal in Rwanda. "They were struggling to hold back tears. They were broken men."

"One of them said, 'They never asked me a single question' the whole time he was there. They just beat him again and again."

The same Iraqi also says that the general who headed the prison, Janis Karpinski, personally witnessed abuses there.

"I was showing him photographs," said Hourigan, including some from a news magazine, "when he pointed at her picture and said, 'She was there.'"

Karpinski could not be reached for comment.

Titan's Williams told UPI the lawsuit was "riddled with basic inaccuracies" and would be "vigorously defended." The CACI statement said that in light of "the frivolous and malicious nature of this lawsuit," the company was "examining its options for sanctions against the lawyers who participated in the filing."

Critics deride lawsuits like Tuesday's as "fishing expeditions" to get access to company documents and the chance to depose executives in the hope that they will be able to uncover evidence that will discredit the company and help their case.

But Hourigan defended the case he and his colleagues had brought. "There are rich fields of information there to plough," he said.