Abu Ghraib military contractor warned bosses of abuses 2 weeks after arriving, testimony reveals

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A civilian contractor sent to work as an interrogator at Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison resigned within two weeks of his arrival and told his corporate bosses that mistreatment of detainees was likely to continue.

Jurors saw the October 2003 email from Rich Arant, who worked for military contractor CACI, during testimony Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by three Abu Ghraib survivors. The former prisoners are suing CACI, alleging that the Reston-Virginia based company shares responsibility for the mistreatment they endured.

CACI had a contract to supply interrogators to the Army after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and scrambled to supply the needed personnel. The first CACI interrogators arrived at Abu Ghraib on Sept. 28 of that year.

Arant sent his resignation letter to CACI on Oct. 14. He informed his bosses about his concerns over the handling of prisoners, including what he described as an unauthorized interview of a female inmate by male interrogators. He wrote that “violations of the well-written rules of engagement will likely continue to occur.”

CACI senior officials took no action in response to Arant's resignation letter, according to CACI's lawyers. Subsequent investigations showed that horrific abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including physical and sexual assaults of inmates, continued for months until the Army launched an investigation in January 2004.

Shocking photos of the abuse became public in April 2004, resulting in a worldwide scandal.

The trial now going forward in U.S. District Court in Alexandria has been delayed by 15 years of legal wrangling and multiple attempts by CACI to have the case dismissed. It is the first lawsuit brought by Abu Ghraib detainees to be heard by a U.S. jury.

In a 2021 pretrial hearing, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema warned CACI that Arant's email “would be a smoking gun in almost any piece of litigation.”

“I’m amazed that nobody at CACI would have wanted to follow up on that type of a memo,” Brinkema said, according to a transcript of that hearing. “Did anybody probe the Arant e-mail? Did anybody speak with him and find out exactly what it was about Abu Ghraib that was troubling him?”

CACI's lawyers have acknowledged that Arant's resignation did not prompt any type of follow-up. But they have said his email doesn't actually detail any abuses by CACI interrogators, only the misconduct of Army soldiers over which the company had no control.

“That is somebody saying, ‘I don’t like the way that soldiers are doing interrogations, but CACI people are clean as a whistle here,'" CACI lawyer John O'Connor said at the 2021 hearing.

Subsequent investigations conducted by the Army found that three CACI interrogators — among dozens who were sent to Abu Ghraib — had engaged in detainee abuse. The interrogators used unauthorized dogs, humiliated inmates by forcing them to wear women's underwear, forced detainees into stress positions, and directed a military police sergeant to push and twist a nightstick into a detainee's arm, the investigations found.

On Wednesday, jurors heard videotaped testimony from retired Maj. Gen. George Fay, who led one of the investigations.

On cross-examination, CACI lawyers asked Fay whether he could link any of the abuses involving CACI contractors to any of the three plaintiffs in the case. Fay said he could not. Many of the specific instances of abuse outlined in Fay's report were inflicted on Iraqi police officers who were thought to have been involved in smuggling a gun into the prison. None of the plaintiffs were police officers.

CACI has argued that even if the plaintiffs suffered abuse, the company should not be held liable unless there's proof that CACI interrogators were directly involved.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that issue is irrelevant, because they argue that CACI's interrogators played a key role in creating the overall abusive environment at Abu Ghraib by encouraging military police to “soften up” detainees for questioning.

The trial has moved quickly, and the plaintiffs rested their case late Wednesday afternoon. The first defense witness was Steven Stefanowicz, one of the three CACI interrogators accused of wrongdoing in Fay's report.

Stefanowicz testified, through a recorded video deposition, that his work was closely supervised by the Army and that the Army chain of command approved all of his interrogation plans. He denied some of the specific findings against him in the Fay report.

Jurors saw heavily redacted interrogation reports that said Army officers had approved the use of dogs and “audio adjustment” — a euphemism for loud music played at night to induce sleep deprivation — for one of the detainees assigned to Stefanowicz. But Stefanowicz testified that he never actually used dogs in his interrogations.

He said that he interacted with only a small number of detainees and that Army supervisors quickly promoted him from screener to interrogator.

His description of his limited interaction with detainees conflicts with other trial evidence. In a written trial submission, the U.S. government said that one Army interrogator once found one of his detainees being interrogated by Stefanowicz without authorization and he had to tell Stefanowicz to stop. Some military police soldiers have said in depositions that Stefanowicz was a regular presence at the prison's “hard site” and gave them instructions on how to abuse prisoners.

This artist sketch depicts Salah Al-Ejaili, foreground with glasses, a former Al-Jazeera journalist, before the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., Tuesday, April 16, 2024. Al-Ejaili, a former detainee at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, has described to jurors the type of abuse that is reminiscent of the scandal that erupted there 20 years ago: beatings, being stripped naked and threatened with dogs, stress positions meant to induce exhaustion and pain. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

This artist sketch depicts Salah Al-Ejaili, foreground right with glasses, a former Al-Jazeera journalist, before the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., Tuesday, April 16, 2024. Al-Ejaili, a former detainee at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, has described to jurors the type of abuse that is reminiscent of the scandal that erupted there 20 years ago: beatings, being stripped naked and threatened with dogs, stress positions meant to induce exhaustion and pain. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

This artist sketch depicts Salah Al-Ejaili, foreground with glasses, a former Al-Jazeera journalist, before the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., Tuesday, April 16, 2024. Al-Ejaili, a former detainee at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, has described to jurors the type of abuse that is reminiscent of the scandal that erupted there 20 years ago: beatings, being stripped naked and threatened with dogs, stress positions meant to induce exhaustion and pain. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — United Methodist delegates began making historic changes in their policies on sexuality on Tuesday — voting without debate to reverse a series of anti-LGBTQ polices.

The delegates voted to delete mandatory penalties for conducting same-sex marriages and to remove their denomination's bans on considering LGBTQ candidates for ministry and on funding for gay-friendly ministries.

The 667-54 vote, coming during their legislative General Conference, removes some of the scaffolding around the United Methodist Church's longstanding bans on LGBTQ-affirming policies regarding ordination, marriage and funding.

Still to come later this week are votes on the core of the bans on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage in church law and policy, which may draw more debate. However, the large majority achieved by Tuesday's votes indicate the tenor of the General Conference. The consensus was so overwhelming that these items were rolled into the legislative “consent calendar," normally reserved for non-controversial measures.

The actions follow a historic schism in what was long the third-largest denomination in the United States. About one-quarter of U.S. congregations left between 2019 and 2023, mostly conservative churches dismayed that the denomination wasn't enforcing its longstanding LGBTQ bans. With the absence of many conservative delegates, who had been in the solid majority in previous general conferences and had steadily reinforced such bans over the decades, progressive delegates are moving quickly to reverse such policies.

Such actions could also prompt departures of some international churches, particularly in Africa, where more conservative sexual values prevail and where same-sex activity is criminalized in some countries.

United Methodist Church law still bans the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” into ministry — a decades-old rule that will come up for a vote later this week.

However, on Tuesday, the General Conference voted to remove a related ban — on church officials considering someone for ordination who fits that category.

It also removed mandatory penalties — imposed by a 2019 General Conference — on clergy who conduct ceremonies celebrating same-sex weddings or unions.

And it imposed a moratorium on any church judicial processes seeking to discipline any clergy for violating LGBTQ-related rules.

In addition, the General Conference took actions toward being openly LGBTQ-affirming.

It repealed a longstanding ban on any United Methodist entity using funds “to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.” That previous ban also forbade the funding of any effort to "reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends" and expressly supported the funding of responses to the anti-HIV epidemic. However, the mixed wording of the old rule has been replaced with a ban on funding any effort to “reject any LGBTQIA+ person or openly discriminate against LGBTQIA+ people.”

Other rule changes called for considering of LGBTQ people along with other demographic categories for appointments in an effort to have diversity on various church boards and entities.

The General Conference is the UMC’s first legislative gathering since 2019, one that features its most progressive slate of delegates in recent memory following the departure of more than 7,600 mostly conservative congregations in the United States because it essentially stopped enforcing its bans on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination.

Those departures came during a window between 2019 and 2023 allowing them to leave with their properties, held in trust for the denomination, under friendlier than normal terms. Conservatives are expected to ask that such terms be extended for international and U.S. churches that don't agree with the General Conference's actions.

Still to come this week are final votes on whether to remove the bans on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage, and whether to whether to replace a longstanding document that had called the “practice of homosexuality … incompatible with Christian teaching.”

All of those proposals had overwhelming support in committee votes last week.

The changes would be historic in a denomination that has debated LGBTQ issues for more than half a century at its General Conferences, which typically meet every four years.

Last week, the conference endorsed a regionalization plan that essentially would allow the churches of the United States the same autonomy as other regions of the global church. That change – which still requires local ratification -- could create a scenario where LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage are allowed in the United States but not in other regions. Delegates on Tuesday approved a related measure related to regionalization.

The conference last week also approved the departure of a small group of conservative churches in the former Soviet Union.

The denomination had until recently been the third largest in the United States, present in almost every county. But its 5.4 million U.S. membership in 2022 is expected to drop once the 2023 departures are factored in.

The denomination also counts 4.6 million members in other countries, mainly in Africa, though earlier estimates have been higher.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

The Rev. Tracy Cox of First United Methodist Church, left, and members of her congregation pray for Tracy Merrick, a delegate representing Western Pennsylvania at the United Methodist General Conference, as well as The Rev. Anais Hussian and Joshua Popson, Sunday, April 14, 2024, in Pittsburgh. Hussian is a reserve delegate at the General Conference and Popson is advocating for LGBTQ inclusion with the Love Your Neighbor Coalition. The 11-day conference is the denomination's first legislative gathering since a special session in 2019. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

Corrects Photographer ID: Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball presides at a session of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church on Monday, April 29, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Peter Smith)