Thursday, August 04, 2011

Well, Good

An American former military contractor who claims he was imprisoned and tortured by the US army in Iraq has been allowed by a judge to sue the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally for damages.

[...]

[T]his is the second time a federal judge has allowed a US citizen to sue Rumsfeld personally.

UK Guardian

Yeah, check that one out, too. We don't know the identity of the latest plaintiff, but the previous case involves two contractors who claim they were tortured at Camp Cropper to keep them from blowing the whistle on illegal weapons trading. And, they don't even have Arab sounding names - Vance and Ertel. Like this latest plaintiff, they also were never charged - just held and tortured.

One of the striking things brought forth in the lawsuit by Vance and Ertel is that once they had severed ties with SGS, they were effectively stranded outside the “Green Zone,” and kept within this SGS compound–and when they called the U.S. Embassy for help, and troops were sent to “rescue” them, that is when they were taken into custody by their “rescuers” and then brought first to Camp Prosperity and then Camp Cropper. Eventually they were submitted to the same kind of abuse that some might have thought had been reserved for Iraqi “terrorists” only. The further irony is that they were being accused of the very activities about which they leaked information, that corrupt American contractors at SGS were involved in an illegal weapons trade that likely benefited insurgents.

Zero Anthropology

And good luck.

Where is Derr Rumsfiend now? Has he split for digs in Nicaragua yet?

UPDATE: Oh, how appropriate in every facet. From Wikipedia: “Rumsfeld lives in St. Michaels, Maryland, in a former plantation house, Mount Misery,” the home of Edward Covey [slave breaker].

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!