Americans Get Away with Murder and Torture in Iraq (corps are immune from civil claims...) [View all]
Despite promises that Americans who committed acts of torture, murder and other war crimes in Iraq would be brought to justice, the U.S. “justice system” has failed utterly in doing so. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2004 about torture at the U.S. military prison near Abu Ghraib, Iraq, even vowed that “It is my obligation to evaluate what happened, to make sure those who have committed wrongdoing are brought to justice, and to make changes as needed to see that it doesn't happen again.” (emphasis added.)
As two cases decided last week demonstrate, that promise was empty at best.
The first case arose directly from the Abu Ghraib torture chambers, where detainees alleged that they were subjected to a variety of torture techniques, including “electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs.” In 2008, some of the surviving detainees filed suit against CACI International, Inc., whose employees were involved in the torture, under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a 224-year-old law that grants jurisdiction to federal courts over “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.”
U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee dismissed their claims, ruling that CACI cannot be sued for its role in torturing them because corporations are immune from civil claims for wrongs committed outside the U.S. Basing his decision on the 2011 Supreme Court case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, in which the Court held that the ATS does not apply to claims by foreign nationals against a corporation for conduct that occurred entirely outside the U.S., Lee held that “Here, as in Kiobel, Plaintiffs are barred from asserting ATS jurisdiction because the alleged conduct giving rise to their claims occurred exclusively on foreign soil.”
Attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) who represented the detainees criticized what they called Lee's “narrow and technical” reading of Kiobel, arguing that he ignored an exception for cases that “touch and concern” the U.S. “with sufficient force.” Noting that Judge Lee’s ruling came down on the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, Baher Azmy, CCR’s legal director, said that the “ruling effectively created lawless spaces where even U.S.-based entities can commit torture and war crimes with impunity.” He promised an appeal.
http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/americans-get-away-with-murder-and-torture-in-iraq-130701?news=850439
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