Verdict ordering CACI to pay three Iraqis $42 million is casualty of Supreme Court’s June ruling gutting Alien Tort Statute

August 28, 2026, Richmond, VA – Having previously upheld a historic $42 million judgment for three Abu Ghraib torture survivors against CACI Premier Technology, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals today threw out the jury verdict, ruling it is no longer valid in light of the Supreme Court’s decision this past June restricting the Alien Torts Statute (ATS), the law under which the Iraqis brought their case. 

“What we did in pursuing acccountability for 18 years for the torture we suffered at Abu Ghraib was a big thing. We trusted a U.S. jury with our stories, and they believed us and sided with us – this is the most important part of the case,” said Salah Al-Ejaili, one of the plaintiffs in the case. “History will show that it was the Supreme Court that denied us justice.” 

Filed in 2008, Al Shimari v. CACI is the only lawsuit brought by Abu Ghraib torture victims – or any post-9/11 torture victims – to make it to trial, having overcome more than twenty motions to dismiss. The plaintiffs – Suhail Al Shimari, a middle school principal, Asa’ad Zuba’e, a fruit vendor, and Salah Al-Ejaili, a journalist – were all held in the “hard site” in Abu Ghraib and endured what Maj. General Anthony Taguba called the “sadistic, blatant, wanton” abuses that horrified the world when photos were leaked in 2004. Hired by the U.S. government to provide interrogation services at Abu Ghraib, the Virginia-based private contractor CACI was found liable twenty years later, in November 2024, for conspiring to torture and for cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. 

After affirming the verdict in March of this year, the Fourth Circuit reconsidered it in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe, which gutted the ATS, a 1789 federal law that allows foreign nationals to seek redress in U.S. federal courts for certain “law of nations” violations. In Cisco, the Supreme Court effectively reversed a 2004 decision that found the ATS applied to modern-day human rights violations that were universal, specific, and obligatory to respect – which courts have repeatedly found to include torture – and instead limited the reach to a small number of violations, including piracy. The Fourth Circuit today rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that CACI’s torts “correspond to piracy,” which the Supreme Court cited as a still-viable basis for a case under the ATS. While the Fourth Circuit had, in previous rulings in this case, said torture is “commensurate with acts of piracy” and called CACI a “modern-day pirate,” today it ruled that Cisco mandated reversal of its prior decisions and remanded the case to be dismissed without prejudice.

“As radical and regressive as the Supreme Court’s decision in Cisco is, it will never change this fundamental truth: a jury heard voluminous testimony and unanimously concluded CACI was responsible for the torture and abuse of dozens of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, including these plaintiffs, rendering CACI, in the words of a foundational ATS-human rights case, ‘hostis humani generis’ – an ‘enemy of all mankind,’” said Baher Azmy, Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “We remain in awe of the bravery and dedication of our clients, who fought for 18 years for justice for themselves, their families, and other survivors of horrific human rights abuses. This Supreme Court may continue to do great damage to human rights cases,, but it cannot take the courage and dignity away from our clients’ historic achievement.”  

Along with hundreds of other Iraqis abused at Abu Ghraib, the plaintiffs have suffered long-term physical and psychological effects. A first trial, in April 2024, coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal and marked the first time that survivors of U.S. post-9/11 torture had testified in a U.S. courtroom. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict, but seven months later, a different jury ordered CACI to pay each plaintiff $3 million in compensatory damages plus $11 million in punitive damages. The verdict provided a rare measure of justice to victims of U.S. torture and brought rare accountability to a private contactor at a time when many have been implicated in human rights abuses around the world. 

It also demonstrated the value of the ATS to foreign nationals who suffer human rights abuses, as it allowed them to seek civil remedies in U.S. courts. The Center for Constitutional Rights pioneered the use of the ATS as a means to seek accountability for gross violations of international law. Although enacted in 1789, it was little used until 1979, when the Center for Constitutional Rights filed Filártiga v. Peña-Irala on behalf of the family members of a Paraguayan teenager who had been tortured to death. Until Cisco, the ATS had been a key vehicle for human rights victims and survivors, from Burma/Myanmar to Palestine to Colombia to Nigeria and beyond, to seek and receive justice in U.S. federal courts. It also helped usher in a new era of corporate accountability, which only deepens in courts around the world, even as the United States continues its backward slide to protect corporations and the powerful instead of victims of the worst abuses and the most vulnerable.

Mr. Al Shimari, Mr. Zuba’e, and Mr. Al-Ejaili are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, and Shereef Akeel of Akeel & Valentine, PLC

For more information, see the Al Shimari case page.