A legal reckoning for some of the darkest episodes of the US war in Iraq gathered momentum on Monday when a federal court found that Iraqis abused at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison could sue an American corporation involved in their torture.



Overturning a lower court, the US court of appeals for the fourth circuit in Richmond, Virginia ruled Monday that four Iraqis subjected to torture at Abu Ghraib during the 2003-2011 US occupation can seek damages against one of the contracting companies at the prison, CACI International.

It is unclear how extensive the ruling will prove to be for victims of US torture. But not only does it represent a rare instance of judges permitting foreign nationals' pursuit of legal claims against US citizens in a war zone, it comes as Iraqis are travelling to Washington DC to testify in a criminal trial against guards working for the security company formerly known as Blackwater over the 2007 shooting death of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad's Nisour Square.

The four Iraqis suing CACI over Abu Ghraib told the court that their interrogators and guards subjected them to abuses including beatings, forced nudity, being "repeatedly shot in the head with a taser gun", "beaten on the genitals with a stick", and forced to watch the "rape [of] a female detainee".

Employees for CACI, a company performing linguistics and interrogation work for the US at Abu Ghraib, stand accused of having "instigated" and "encouraged" the abuse as well as participating in it, and in aiding to cover it up.

The discovery in 2004 of the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib, a former torture prison of Saddam Hussein, sparked international outrage and inflamed a brutal Iraqi insurgency. Although Abu Ghraib was a signal event in the Iraq war, Iraqi survivors of the abuse have received little recompense for their suffering.

Blackwater, now known as Constellis after multiple rebranding attempts and ownership changes, settled with some Iraqi victims of Nisour Square in 2010. A former co-defendant in the CACI case, L-3, agreed in 2013 to pay $5m to 71 Iraqis abused at Abu Ghraib. Criminal penalties for Abu Ghraib have centered around low-level guards like ex-army reserve specialist Lynddie England, who served less than two years in a military prison before receiving parole in 2007.

Although a district court had ruled that the Iraqi lawsuit could not proceed against CACI for lack of jurisdiction, the appeals court on Monday found that the scope of the Alient Tort Statute, an 18th-century law permitting non-US citizens access to US courts for violations of "the law of nations or a treaty of the United States", encompassed the Abu Ghraib legal effort. Relying on a 2013 supreme court ruling on the breadth of the law, known as Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, the judges found that the alleged torture claim possessed "sufficient force to displace" a presumption against US judges' jurisdiction for crimes committed abroad.

US army military policemen pat down suspected insurgents while processing new detainees at the Abu Ghraib in 2005. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

But the fourth circuit judges acknowledged that the high court's guidance about the applicability of the Alien Torture Statute (ATS) was murky, a finding with the potential to hinder further lawsuits by victims of US torture.

The supreme court's "language provides current guidance to federal courts when ATS claims involve substantial ties to United States territory. We have such a case before us now, and we cannot decline to consider the supreme court’s guidance simply because it does not state a precise formula for our analysis," the fourth circuit ruled on Monday.

CACI representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Iraqis' lawyer called the fourth circuit ruling a blow against "impunity for torture and war crimes".

"This leaves open the possibility that US corporations, because of their connection to the United States, can be held liable for torture or other human rights atrocities they commit abroad," Bahar Azmy, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the Guardian. The Center for Constitutional Rights also represented Nisour Square victims in the now-settled lawsuit.

But Azmy cautioned that the fourth circuit ruling only "eliminates one hurdle" to foreigners' lawsuits seeking recompense for US torture. Others remain, such as much-litigated questions of immunity, state secrets and the so-called "political question" doctrine holding that judges should not settle political disputes.

Still, Azmy said it potentially permitted a "meaningful opportunity" for Abu Ghraib victims to have their day in US courts, "including finally testifying about their ordeal."

Such testimony is expected over the coming weeks in the Nisour Square criminal case. The FBI is facilitating the arrival of over four dozen Iraqi witnesses, the New York Times reported, in a manslaughter and murder case.