Nearly 20 years after Public Interest Investigations, Inc. and its president, Keith Rohman, began serving as the principal investigators for the lawyers representing detainees at the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison in Al Shimari, et al. v. CACI, a federal jury ruled in favor of three of the detainees on November 12, 2024.
The landmark verdict found that CACI International, a civilian Virginia-based defense contractor with the U.S. government, was responsible for inhumane treatment of the detainees. CACI was ordered to pay $3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million in punitive damages to each of the three detainees, totaling $42 million.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and attorneys Susan Burke and Shereef Akeel, among others, filed the lawsuit against CACI in 2008 on behalf of the detainees, whose torture and abuse at the prison was documented in leaked images. The case was brought to trial by CCR and Patterson Belknap.
“This case arguably is the most important matter of PII’s 40+ year history,” noted Rohman. “Our work started in 2005 and involved travel to Jordan, Turkey, Germany, and throughout the U.S. We conducted additional investigative work in 2013, and again in 2024 as the case finally went to trial. The jury’s verdict elicits immense emotions, particularly for our clients who exhibited tremendous courage as they endured a legal process spanning three decades.”
Learn more at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.