A federal judge has agreed to allow an Army veteran who says he was tortured during a nine-month imprisonment in Iraq to sue former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The veteran, identified only as John Doe in court documents, traveled to Iraq as a civilian employee of an American-owned defense contracting firm in December 2004. He worked as an Arabic translator and was assigned to work with a Marine Corps Human Exploitation Team, an intelligence unit.

The team operated in Anbar Province, gathering intelligence through local Iraqi contacts. In his suit, Doe maintains that he was the first American to open direct talks with a Sunni Arab tribal leader, Sheikh Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, who had gathered the Anbar tribes and worked with the Americans to fight jihadist militants in the province. (Sheikh Sattar was assassinated in 2007.)

In his suit, Doe claims that he was abducted by the American military in November 2005, as he was preparing to come home for annual leave. He was handcuffed, blindfolded and held in solitary confinement for 72 hours before being shuttled to Camp Cropper where, according to Doe, he was held in a military jail and subjected to routine abuse.

The government suspected him of sharing classified information with the enemy, the suit says, but he was never charged with a crime before he was released in August 2006. He claims that he never broke the law and that he was risking his life to help his country. (Court document embedded below.)





The Justice Department, which has represented Mr. Rumsfeld, argues that he cannot be sued personally for official conduct. The department also asserted that wartime decisions are the constitutional responsibility of Congress and the president, not the courts. The department also said the case could disclose sensitive information and claimed that the threat of liability would impede future military decisions.

In his decision, Judge James Gwin of Federal District Court rejected those arguments, saying that American citizens are protected by the Constitution at home or abroad during wartime. “The court finds no convincing reason that United States citizens in Iraq should or must lose previously-declared substantive due process protections during prolonged detention in a conflict zone abroad,” he said.

Doe also named as defendants Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Alan Bersin, the Customs and Border Protection commissioner, and John Morton, assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The lawsuit accuses them of a failure to secure the return of his property seized upon his detention and of violations of his right to travel.