Detainee's Lawsuit Against Rumsfeld to Be Heard in D.C. Federal Court
The ACLU announced today that the lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld filed by human rights groups on behalf of 8 Iraqi and Afghan detainees who claim they were subjected to torture and abuse while in detention in U.S. facilities will be heard in the D.C. federal court:
A lawsuit that seeks to hold Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others directly responsible for the abuse and torture of detainees in U.S. military custody will be heard in a federal court in the District of Columbia, a seven-judge panel ruled yesterday. The lawsuit, which was the first to name Secretary Rumsfeld in the ongoing torture scandal in Afghanistan and Iraq, was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First on behalf of eight Afghan and Iraqi men who were tortured while they were held in U.S. detention facilities.
n transferring the case to the federal court in the District of Columbia, the seven-judge panel, known as the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, consolidated for pretrial proceedings the suit against Secretary Rumsfeld with three separate complaints filed by the ACLU against Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinsky, and Col. Thomas Pappas. The decision to transfer the case to the District of Columbia was opposed by government lawyers representing the senior military commanders who argued that the cases should be heard in the Eastern District of Virginia.
"We welcome this decision and hope that we are closer to having a federal court reverse policy decisions that have led to torture and abuse," said Michael Posner, Executive Director of Human Rights First.
More information is also available at Human Rights First.
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