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Ill. Judge Won't Toss Torture Suit Naming Rumsfeld
CHICAGO - A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for the alleged torture by U.S. forces of two Americans who worked for an Iraqi contracting firm.
U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen's ruling did not say the two contractors had proven their claims, including that they were tortured after reporting alleged illegal activities by their company. But it did say they had alleged enough specific mistreatment to warrant hearing evidence of exactly what happened.
Andersen said his decision "represents a recognition that federal officials may not strip citizens of well settled constitutional protections against mistreatment simply because they are located in a tumultuous foreign setting."
Andersen did throw out two of the lawsuit's three counts but gave former contractors Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel the green light to go forward with a third count alleging they were unconstitutionally tortured under procedures personally approved by Rumsfeld.
In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said by telephone only that the department, which is representing Rumsfeld in the suit, "is reviewing the court's decision."
Vance and Ertel were described by their attorney, Mike Kanovitz of Chicago, as being in their early thirties. He said the two Americans went to Iraq in the fall of 2005 to work for the Iraqi-owned contracting firm of Shield Group Security.
The suit filed in 2006 alleges that while working for the company they saw fellow employees making payments to "certain Iraqi sheikhs" and dealing in armaments in a way they believed would not be approved by the U.S. military.
According to the suit, Vance contacted an FBI official in Chicago with his suspicions and the two men eventually shared their concerns with three U.S. Embassy officials in Baghdad.
The suit said their actions provoked suspicion at the company and on April 14, 2006, fellow employees confiscated the identity cards that allowed them to enter the safe area known as the Green Zone.
The two men said they locked themselves in a room, called the Embassy for help and were extricated by "United States forces" who took them to the Embassy where they were taken into custody.
They were taken to two military camps in the Baghdad vicinity in the weeks that followed, the suit said. It said Ertel was released after a month and Vance after two months.
While in custody, they were subjected to sleep deprivation, long hours of interrogation, blasting music, threats, hunger and a practice known as "walling" in which subjects are blindfolded and walked into walls, according to the suit.
The suit describes such practices as forms of torture and alleges Rumsfeld personally took part in determining such methods were acceptable for use by the military in Iraq.
The two men are seeking unspecified damages. The next hearing is set for March 25.
17 Comments so far
Show AllCicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"Walling," that's a new one. More American citizens tortured by their own government. I wonder if they've been able to take the strait-jacket off citizen Padillo yet now several years after the torture doctors helped drive him insane.
This is starting to sound like numerious 'dirty wars' that Corporate America has started globally.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Maybe it's a generational thing but all this torture stuff and all the overseas torture prisons and CIA harsh interrogation "black sites" remind me of conditions in the old Soviet torture-prison gulags described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book
The Gulag Archipelago. There were "doctors" instrumental in designing those torture regimes as well.
Growing up in the Cold War in America our news media and many right-wing, Republican arch anti-communists used to routinely and justifiably make fun of the Soviet Union and Red China as "torture States." That's why it was so nauseatingly surrealistically Orwellian when Bush II made the U.S. an overt torture State and Republicans and right-wing Dimocrats crawled out of the walls and out from under rocks to cover-up, excuse, defend and protect the use of torture and the torturers themselves.
Read "War is a Racket", by General Smedley D Butler, US history's most decorated Marine prior to WWII.
This makes it imperative that the prosecution present evidence in a clear and forceful manner, and that this not be allowed to set a precedent that R's activites were acceptable. While we might celebrate victory of a sort, just because this may preceed to trial, victory isn't complete until the guilty are held accountable.
I could live with pardon's once evidence is made public, guilt is pronounced, sentences given, and the nation made to face the reality of torture and it's effect on both the victum and on the nation which authorized it.
aAnd so I guess now that they have been tortured and unjustly detained, they can properly be labeled terrorists just like the Muslims.
Why is the "justice" department defending Rumsfeld?
Is he still employed by this administration?
Is he one of Obama's talismans or is he a fetish?
There is no defense for a deluded sadists in government.
Why would any man elevate the thinking and behavior that emanates from the most reptilian regions of a humans psyche that would cause one to think and behave like torture was ever acceptable? A real man, or woman, would not.
When Our Constitution was written the most noble aspects of human nature were aspired to; nothing that came out of the Bush administration and their neocon crew even comes close to the principles that were expressed by the Founding Fathers.
Once this conduct is authorised and implemented it spreads like wildfire and encompasses bring in all sorts of different personnel. It spreads throughout official and contracting groupings. Then the box must remain shut lest fingers are pointed here there and everywhere. Politically Obama can hardly allow this now either. After all his forces are doing the same. So are allies dragged into it and of course veto by Israel too. Evil empire indeed.
Shield Group Security did not learn anything from the Pat Tillman event.
Wow! I did not know we still had judges like this.
Gee, only Rummy ?
and only on torture ?
Let's get the whole Bush Administration in there.
Bastards
Just wait until we have all read the Bush-Cheney-Rove books that are coming out and we will understand what wonderful things they have all done and should never be criticized.
Warning: The above post is satire. Please do not flame Kernelz.
Good for the Judge.
We need to clean up this country's good name and this a good place to start.
Tom Edgar
Wake up. America is and always has been largely Fascist in nature.
Read the Grapes of Wrath or any other works of Steinbeck.
Read up on the McCarthy era and the persecution of Paul Robeson and so many others.
Learn of your, not so early, history of the persecution of Unionists and workers who a la Joe Hill, demanded their rights, suffering persecution or murder as a consquence.
Oh! You aren't alone England was as bad. The massacre at Peterloo. The Tolpuddle Martyrs. The Black & Tans in Ireland with a swathe of tortures and murders to their infamous name.
Oh they were brought into being by the arch Fascist Churchill who said of the ex WW1 veteran coal miners, who were fighting against pay reductions, and increased working hours. "Give me a brigade of Guards and I'll drive the scum under the earth." Oh yes Fascism comes in many guises.
Dress it up pretend it is something else and sure as eggs paraphrasing those famous words. "You can fool most of the people most of the time."
Democracy is when the people have a SAY in the running of the country. When did WE ever have it?