Will Anyone Pay for Abu Ghraib?

What happened at the Abu Ghraib prison during the early days of the Iraq war is no secret: The whole world has seen the appalling photos.

Detainees under American control were raped, beaten, shocked, stripped, starved of food and sleep, hung by their wrists, threatened with death and, in at least one case, murdered. These are war crimes, punishable under both American and international law.

Yet more than a decade after the fact, only a few low-level military personnel have been held criminally accountable for the abuse and torture that went on there. Meanwhile, the private companies that contracted with the United States military to help “interrogate” detainees are still trying to avoid any accounting at all by civilian courts. They had no problem taking taxpayers’ money, but when it comes to taking responsibility for their role at the prison, they try to hide behind a web of convoluted arguments that would render them legally untouchable.

On Friday, a federal trial court in Virginia will consider whether two of these contractors — CACI International Inc. and L-3 Services Inc. — can be sued for damages in American courts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/opinion/will-anyone-pay-for-abu-ghraib.html