Jury in federal lawsuit deadlocks on Abu Ghraib torture allegations

A federal jury in Virginia said today that it was unable to reach a verdict in a lawsuit filed by three Iraqi men who said they were tortured while being held by the United States at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison two decades ago.

The jurors had deliberated for almost eight days, and with the panel still deadlocked the judge in the case, Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, declared a mistrial today.

The three plaintiffs had sued a defense contractor, CACI Premier Technology, asserting that CACI employees working as interrogators at the prison directed U.S. military guards to abuse the men in an effort to “soften” them up.

The testimony of the three men last month was the first time a civilian jury had heard allegations of post-9/11 abuses directly from detainees.

In a handwritten note to the judge today, the jury foreperson wrote that the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict, largely because of differing interpretations of the evidence and of a legal defense known as the “borrowed servant” doctrine, where CACI could avoid liability by proving that its employees were under government control.

The mistrial means that the lawsuit, filed in 2008, can continue, if the plaintiffs seek another trial and the court agrees.

The plaintiffs were represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a human rights organization, and Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, a law firm in New York.

Baher Azmy, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the plaintiffs’ legal team would “pursue our right to a retrial.”

J. William Koegel Jr., CACI’s general counsel, did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2013, another contractor that had employees at Abu Ghraib settled a similar case by agreeing to pay $5 million.

During five days of testimony, the jury heard the three plaintiffs, now middle age, describe their treatment in U.S. custody at Abu Ghraib.

The jury also heard testimony from two retired Army generals who had investigated Abu Ghraib. A report by one of them, Gen. Antonio Taguba, found that one of CACI’s civilian interrogators “made a false statement” and “clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse” that was carried out by U.S. military police.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.