Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

Donald Rumsfeld, former United States Defence Secretary, learned this week that he would be sued by not one but three U.S. citizens over allegations of torture by the U.S. military in Iraq.

This week the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld a lower court’s decision that two American men who had filed a civil lawsuit against Mr. Rumsfeld could move forward with the case notwithstanding efforts by the Bush and Obama administrations to block it.

The latest blow for Mr. Rumsfeld came in the wake of last week’s decision by a District Judge to allow an American military contractor to sue Mr. Rumsfeld for the alleged imprisonment and torture that he was subjected to by the U.S. army in Iraq.

According to the decision this week the two men, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, were working with a private security company in Iraq in 2006 when they grew increasingly concerned that their firm was engaging in bribery and other illicit activities.

The court documents suggested that when they notified U.S. authorities in early 2006, they were imprisoned by the U.S. military, taken to Camp Cropper in Baghdad and “subjected to harsh interrogations and physical and emotional abuse.” Specifically they alleged that they were subjected to “sleep and food deprivation, threats of violence, actual violence and prolonged solitary confinement.”

Similarly the first individual permitted to sue Mr. Rumsfeld was an army veteran who worked as a translator for the U.S. marines in the restive Anbar province when he was detained for nine months at Camp Cropper. Allegedly that individual, currently unidentified, was suspected of passing on classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces enter Iraq.

While he was not charged with any crime, his lawyers “say he was preparing to return to the U.S. on annual leave when he was detained without justification and ... repeatedly abused, then released without explanation in August 2006.”

Both in his case and in the cases of Vance and Ertel, the plaintiffs have argued that Mr. Rumsfeld personally approved torture as an interrogation technique. The appeals court agreed with the plaintiffs that they had sufficiently argued that the decisions were made at the highest levels of government.

“We agree with the district court that the plaintiffs have alleged sufficient facts to show that Secretary Rumsfeld personally established the relevant policies that caused the alleged violations of their constitutional rights during detention,” the court ruled.

Mike Kanovitz, lawyer for one of the plaintiffs, was quoted as saying that the U.S. military seemed to want to hold his client behind bars to prevent him from talking about an important contact he made with a leading Sheik while helping to collect intelligence in Iraq.

“The U.S. government wasn't ready for the rest of the world to know about it, so they basically put him on ice,” Mr. Kanovitz reportedly said, adding, “If you've got unchecked power over the citizens, why not use it?”