...A judge on Friday ordered a retrial over allegations that a Virginia-based military contractor contributed to the abuse and torture of detainees at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison two decades ago.

A civil trial earlier this year ended with a hung jury and mistrial, with the eight-person panel split on whether contractor CACI bore responsibility for abuse of the three Abu Ghraib survivors who filed suit. Two jurors told The Associated Press after the mistrial that a majority of the jury wanted to hold CACI liable. A unanimous jury verdict is required in federal civil cases.

CACI supplied civilian interrogators to the prison in 2003 and 2004 to supplement a lack of military interrogators. The lawsuit alleged that those interrogators conspired with soldiers there to abuse detainees as a means of “softening them up” for questioning...

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who were represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, had argued that they were entitled to a retrial by right, and that the judge could only preclude it if CACI could show that no reasonable jury would hold it liable...

Read the full piece here.