Chicago Tribune
Chicagoan's suit charges torture by GIs in Iraq
By Matt O'Connor
Tribune staff reporter
December 19, 2006
A Chicago man who worked for an Iraqi contractor alleged Monday he was
imprisoned in a U.S. military compound in Baghdad, held incommunicado
for more than 3 months and subjected to interrogation techniques
"tantamount to torture."
In a federal lawsuit filed in Chicago, Donald Vance, 29, a Navy
veteran, charged that his constitutional rights were trampled by
American military interrogators even though they knew he was a U.S.
citizen.
"I couldn't believe they did this to any human being," Vance said in a
telephone interview.
Vance was taken into custody without charges in April. While
imprisoned at Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport, Vance
said, he was held in solitary confinement in a continuously lit,
windowless and extremely cold cell as loud heavy metal and country
music blared non-stop.
The lawsuit charged that Vance, a security consultant for a
private Iraqi firm at the time, was denied basic constitutional rights
to due process as if he were a suspected terrorist or enemy combatant.
"That's why they did it to him--because they could," said Jon
Loevy, one of Vance's lawyers. "If they could do it to Mr. Vance, they
could do it to anybody."
The suit sought unspecified damages and named Donald Rumsfeld, who
stepped down last week as U.S. secretary of defense, as its lone
defendant for his role in overseeing the military prison system in Iraq.
Cynthia Smith, a Defense Department spokeswoman in Washington,
said it is Pentagon policy to decline to comment on pending litigation.
Vance said he and co-worker Nathan Ertel suspected their Iraqi
employer, Shield Group Security, of paying off local sheiks for
influence in obtaining government contracts.
2 blew the whistle
The two blew the whistle, becoming informants for the FBI in
Chicago and U.S. officials in Iraq. But when they felt their lives had
been threatened by their employer, they gathered up weapons and
arranged for U.S. military forces to rescue them.
"We did an Alamo," said Vance in reference to their barricading
themselves in a room in their employer's compound until the military
rescue.
But after being debriefed at the U.S. Embassy, the two were
awakened in the middle of the night, arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded
and taken to the first of two U.S. military installations, according to
the lawsuit.
"Certain low-level bureacrats in the federal government apparently
came to believe, quite incorrectly, that Mr. Vance might have more
information, and they set out to extract it from him," the suit said.
Vance said military authorities at Camp Cropper knew he was a U.S.
citizen because he had his passport and other identification with him.
Conditions at the camp were primitive and depressing, he said.
Vance was kept in solitary confinement in a tiny, unclean cell,
the lawsuit alleged. It was difficult to sleep because the lights
shined non-stop, temperatures were kept extremely cold and music
pounded at "intolerably loud volumes," the suit said.
Vance was frequently denied food and water, sometimes for an entire
day, the suit said.
Vance said he was interrogated for lengthy periods, denied
necessary medical care and repeatedly threatened with "you'll never
leave here again."
Vance said he was unable to make a phone call to the outside
world, and his family didn't know where he was or even if he was alive.
By the end of April, Vance and Ertel appeared before a so-called
"detainee status group"--three military officers who wore no insignia
displaying name or rank, the lawsuit said.
The two were denied attorneys, barred from seeing any of the
purported evidence against them and unable to cross-examine adverse
witnesses, the suit said.
Vance said the low point came when Ertel, who had been in an
adjoining cell, was released in mid-May. "I had no one to turn to," he
said.
Freed `without an apology'
Vance was held for two additional months before he was dropped off
at the Baghdad International Airport "without so much as an apology,"
said Michael Kanovitz, another Vance lawyer.
"Plaintiff is not a terrorist," the suit said. "He is a United
States citizen, and a veteran at that, who loves this country, and
everything for which it stands, as much as another American. He has
never committed, much less been charged with, any crime."
According to the suit, Vance suffered serious emotional and physical
distress during the ordeal.
Since returning to Chicago, Vance said, he hasn't confided much to his
family about what he went through.
He also said he doesn't go outside much now. "I'm kind of a home-body
now," he said.
By contrast, Ertel, who is represented by the same law firm but not
part of this lawsuit, has returned to work in Iraq.