On April 30, 2004, journalist Seymour Hersh authored a landmark article revealing information from a secret 53-page report from a US military investigation, detailing horrific abuses perpetrated by US military personnel against the Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. Hersch’s groundbreaking report included the infamous “Hooded Man” photo of the torture of detainee Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh.
Yet 21 years after the shocking report of what the US government later called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the Iraqi victims of some of the most blatantly violent acts of US empire remain without justice.
Ali Shallal al-Qaisi, another Abu Ghraib detainee who was tortured in a similar way to the photo depicting Faleh and was initially reported to be the prisoner shown in the “Hooded Man” photo, has recounted his abuse several times to reporters. “I’m spending sleepless nights thinking about the agony I went through,” al-Qaisi recalled. “I even have recurring nightmares that I’m in my cell at Abu Ghraib, cell 49 as they called it, being tortured at the hands of the people of a great nation that carries the torch of freedom and human rights.”
On November 12, 2024, a US federal jury found CACI Premier Technology, a private military contractor for the US government, liable for acts of torture that took place at Abu Ghraib. In a victory following a 15-year legal battle, three Iraqi plaintiffs were awarded USD 42 million in damages. But broadly speaking, the top officials responsible for the policies which led to the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib were never held accountable. The Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946 gives the US government immunity from lawsuits from actions taking place during wartime, forcing plaintiffs to go after private companies instead.
“It’s a very clear-cut case of torture in prison under the military occupation by the US, but on the other hand you can also show the chain of command in setting up the prison system, the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq by the US military. And this goes all up to Donald Rumsfeld,” Andreas Schüller told Al Jazeera in 2023. Schüller works for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and is al-Qaisi’s lawyer.
Rumsfeld, who was the Secretary of Defense under US President George W. Bush, died in 2021, never facing any accountability for the torture that took place under his tenure despite multiple legal attempts. Various organizations including Human Rights Watch have called for investigations of Rumsfeld. In 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit into Rumsfeld and other US government officials “on behalf of eight men who they say were subjected to torture and abuse by US forces under the command of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.” Rumsfeld responded to the lawsuit by claiming that he was immune from responsibility for the acts of torture committed under his leadership. On March 27 of 2007, federal judge Thomas A. Hogan dismissed the case.
The US government has thus far not provided any compensation or redress for the Iraqi victims of torture at Abu Ghraib. Said Sarah Yager, the Washington, DC director of Human Rights Watch, “Twenty years on, Iraqis who were tortured by US personnel still have no clear path for filing a claim or receiving any kind of redress or recognition from the US government.”
The US government also continues to fund similar atrocities committed by the Israeli government against Palestinians. April 17 marked Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, which marks the centrality of Palestinian political prisoners of Israel to the Palestinian cause. Over 10,000 Palestinians are currently detained by the Zionist state, many of whom suffer abuse and torture.
