Justice for Abu Ghraib

Historic Trial in Al Shimari v. CACI (2024)
March 29, 2019

“This victory isn’t only for the three plaintiffs in this case against a corporation. This victory is a shining light for everyone who has been oppressed and a strong warning to any company or contractor practicing different forms of torture and abuse. Those companies should no longer feel exempt from accountability moving forward.” —Plaintiff Salah Al-Ejaili

LANDMARK VICTORY: On November 12, 2024, a Virginia-based jury found CACI liable for conspiring to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of the three plaintiffs, ordering CACI to pay each of them $3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million in punitive damages, for a total of $42 million. Find out more about the case, including CACI’s appeal of the trial verdict on the Al Shimari case page.

In 2008, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Iraqi torture survivors against U.S.-based government contractor CACI Premier Technology, Inc. After nearly 16 years and more than 20 attempts by CACI to have it dismissed, the case proceeded to trial  in April 2024 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict and the case proceeded to trial for a second time, beginning in October.

The final in a series of cases, Al Shimari v. CACI, delivers a rare measure of justice to survivors of the U.S government’s post-9/11 torture regime, which extended from Guantanamo to Iraq and Afghanistan to secret prisons around the world. It also brings a new degree of accountability to the realm of security contractors at a time when employees of private companies have often been implicated in human rights abuses across the globe. 

The trial took place 20 years after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke and the world learned the horrifying treatment Iraqi detainees were subjected to in the U.S.-run detention center. Photographs and video showed naked, hooded detainees posed in human pyramids, prisoners on leashes, and widespread sexual assault – images so horrifying, they are burned into the conscience of a generation. The revelations drew demands for accountability and redress from around the world. Subsequent military investigations led to the court-martial of a small number of low-level U.S. soldiers as well as documentation of the role played in the torture at Abu Ghraib by private military contractors from two U.S. corporations: Titan Corporation (later known as L-3 Services and Engility Corporation) and CACI Premier Technology, Inc.

Never before this case had survivors of U.S post-9/11 torture testified in a U.S. courtroom. After 20 years, the three plaintiffs – Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, Asa’ad Hamza Hanfoosh Zuba’e, and Salah Hasan Nusaif Al-Ejaili, finally had the opportunity to share what they endured at Abu Ghraib through their testimony at trial – Salah, in person in the courtroom in Alexandria, and Asa’ad and Suhail via video-link from Baghdad. The trial also featured testimony from U.S. generals, CACI employees, and former military police involved in the torture.

 

More about Al Shimari v. CACI

 

The federal lawsuit alleges that CACI participated in a conspiracy to commit unlawful conduct, including torture and war crimes at Abu Ghraib prison, where it was hired by the U.S. to provide interrogation services. The plaintiffs were all held at the “hard site,” an area of the Abu Ghraib prison where the most severe techniques were used in 2003-2004.

The case was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, where CACI is headquartered, and brought under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). This U.S. law from 1789 allows non-citizens who have been subjected to well-established violations of international law, such as torture and cruel treatment, to bring a case in U.S. federal court, including against a U.S. corporation, when there is a sufficient connection to the United States. The lawsuit alleges that CACI is liable for conspiracy to commit cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, torture, and war crimes, and for aiding and abetting these acts. The plaintiffs sought compensatory and punitive damages.

Since the case was filed in 2008, CACI has tried to have it dismissed more than 20 times, invoking a range of legal defenses and immunities that argue at the core that CACI should not be held liable for conduct – even if unlawful – done in Iraq, while working under contract with the United States. Before trial, the case had gone on appeal to the Fourth Circuit five times, and, after it failed to have the case dismissed there, CACI sought a Supreme Court review – which was denied. The Supreme Court has narrowed the scope of the Alien Tort Statute three times since this lawsuit was filed, but the case survived: in 2018, Judge Leonie Brinkema found that plaintiffs had sufficiently pled – and had evidence to support – their claims and that the case should proceed to a trial for a U.S. jury to decide the merits. Judge Brinkema reaffirmed this decision after the Supreme Court’s Nestle Alien Tort Statute decision. 

Following the landmark verdict from the jury, CACI moved for judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial, which was denied by Judge Brinkema. In 2025, CACI appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which is currently pending.

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Al Shimari, et al. v. CACI

A challenge to corporate impunity of private military contractors under the Alien Tort Statute for war crimes and torture at Abu Ghraib prison.

Last modified 

September 2, 2025

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