A US former military contractor who claims he was jailed and tortured by the US army in Iraq has been allowed by a judge to sue the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally for damages.
The man, an army veteran whose identity has been withheld, worked as a translator for the US marines in the volatile Anbar province when he was detained for nine months at Camp Cropper, a US military facility near Baghdad airport dedicated to holding “high-value” detainees. The government says he was suspected of helping to pass classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces enter Iraq. But he was never charged with a crime, and says he never broke the law.
Lawyers for the man, who is in his 50s, say he was preparing to return to the US on annual leave when he was detained without justification and that his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or whether he was still alive.
Court papers filed on his behalf say he was repeatedly abused, then released without explanation in August 2006. Two years later, he filed a suit in Washington arguing that Mr Rumsfeld personally approved torturous interrogation techniques on a case-by-case basis and controlled his detention without access to the courts, in violation of his constitutional rights.
Mike Kanovitz, the Chicago lawyer representing the plaintiff, says it appears the military wanted to keep his client behind bars so he would be unable to tell anyone about an important contact he made with a leading sheikh while helping to collect intelligence.
The plaintiff says he was the first American to open direct talks with Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, who became an important US ally and later led a revolt of Sunni sheikhs against al-Qaeda before being killed by a bomb. “The US government wasn’t ready for the rest of the world to know about it, so they basically put him on ice,” Mr Kanovitz said. – (Guardian service/AP)