Prisoner-abuse civil suits in US Courts

The US Judicial Panel for Multidistrict Ligitation met this week to decide what jurisdiction to send the civil cases for the abuses committed in Abu Ghraib, brought against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and three US army commanders by four Iraqi and four Afghani victims. Represented by Amnesty International and Human Rights First, the victims were never charged with a crime, and eventually released. They were, according to the suit, "subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment including severe and repeated beatings, cutting with knives, sexual humiliation and assault." See the Providence Journal story (subscription only).

Yesterday, the panel heard oral arguments about eight matters, including a debate about where to transfer lawsuits that stem, in part, from the well-documented prisoner mistreatment in the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

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The groups filed the lawsuits in the home states of four defendants. The suit against Rumsfeld was filed in Illinois. A suit was filed in Texas against Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was the highest-ranking U.S. military official in Iraq. A suit was filed in South Carolina against Col. Janis Karpinski, the former commander of military police in Iraq, who was relieved of her command over the Abu Ghraib scandal. And a suit was filed in Connecticut against Army Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who oversaw interrogations as commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, in Iraq.

The lawsuits face the obstacle of establishing that Rumsfeld and the other defendants are not protected by official immunity, and that the former prisoners have grounds to sue in U.S. courts.

Yesterday, plaintiffs' lawyer Bill Lann Lee urged the panel to transfer the cases to the Southern District of New York. That district, he noted, is now dealing with a Freedom of Information Act battle regarding information about detainees.

But Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey S. Bucholtz urged the panel to send the cases to the Eastern District of Virginia. That district, he noted, includes the Pentagon.

Some panel members asked why the cases shouldn't be handled in Washington, D.C.