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Great, that only took horrible acts of torture and 20+ years of the victims' lives. Still and all, big ups to the survivors and their supporters for sticking with this for so long. Abu Ghraib and the insane system of Bush-era "private contractors" (i.e., mercenaries) should never be forgotten or rehabilitated -- which includes, you know, not running for office on the support of the Cheney family.
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Today, in a landmark verdict, a jury in a federal court found a Virginia-based government contractor liable for its role in the torture of Iraqi men at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003-2004 and ordered it to pay each of the three plaintiffs $3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million in punitive damages, for a total of $42 million. The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2008 against CACI Premier Technology, Inc., on behalf of three men who endured the sorts of torture and abuse made infamous by leaked images that horrified the world twenty years ago. The jury in an earlier trial last April was unable to reach a unanimous decision; today’s verdict comes from a retrial with a new jury.
The jury found CACI liable for conspiring to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of Suhail Al Shimari, a middle school principal, Asa’ad Zuba’e, a fruit vendor, and Salah Al-Ejaili, a journalist. The men were all held at the “hard site,” the part of the prison where the most severe abuses occurred. Along with hundreds of other Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib, they have suffered long-standing physical and emotional effects.