Lawfare Archive: Accountability for Abu Ghraib

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4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

From December 23, 2024: On today's podcast, Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett talks with Michael Posner, a professor of business and human rights at New York University, about the landmark verdict last month in Al-Shimari v. CACI. The case involved claims against a government contractor for its role in the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq in 2004. It became the first case of its kind to make it to trial—and now a jury has returned a verdict finding the company liable and imposing $42 million in damages. They discuss how the case will affect private companies, government contractors, and the future of human rights litigation.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Electronic Communications Privacy Act turns 40 this year, and it's showing its age.
0:06.0	On Friday, March 6th, Lawfare and Georgetown Law are bringing together leading scholars,
0:11.1	practitioners, and former government officials for installing updates to ECPA, a half-day event
0:16.6	on what's broken with the statute and how to fix it. The event is free and open to the public, in person and online.
0:23.2	Visit lawfaremedia.org slash ECPA event.
0:26.4	That's lawfaremedia.org slash ECPA event for details and to register.
0:51.1	Music I'm Marissa Wong, Internet Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare for March 21, 2006.
0:59.0	On March 12th, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the jury verdict in Al-Shimari v. CACI International, holding a government defense contractor liable for the torture of three Iraqi men at the Abu Ghraib Detention Facility in Iraq in 2004.
1:08.0	The jury found that CACI conspired with U.S. soldiers to, quote,
1:13.0	inflict torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, unquote. And the verdict awarded
1:19.0	the men $42 million in damages. For today's archive, I chose an episode from December 23,
1:26.4	2004, in which Michael Posner joined Natalie Orpett
1:30.5	to discuss the jury's verdict in Al-Shimari and how the landmark decision affects private
1:35.1	companies, government contractors, and the future of human rights litigation. It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Natalie Orpet, executive editor of Lawfare, with Mike Posner,
1:57.7	director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University's
2:01.7	Stern School of Business and a former Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy,
2:06.6	Human Rights, and Labor.
2:08.8	The second jury, though, you know, made the decision that the defendants that Kaki had conspired
2:15.8	with the military police, and as they put it, to set conditions for
2:21.3	interrogation, which resulted in widespread torture.
2:25.1	Today we're talking about a landmark verdict in the case of Al-Shamari v. CACI, where a government
2:31.0	contractor working with the U.S. military and CIA was held liable for torture and human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq back in the early 2000s.
	...

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