June 24, 2005 – Four civil suits alleging that senior administration officials are directly complicit in the torture and abuse of detainees in the war on Iraq the broader "war on terrorism" are heading to federal court, after a judicial panel decided to consolidate and transfer them as one case to a Washington, DC district court.
The suits name Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, General Ricardo Sanchez, General Janis Karpinski and Colonel Thomas Pappas as bearing ultimate responsibility for the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guántanamo Bay and other US military-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lawsuits were filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Human Rights First, both vocal critics of the Bush administration?s handling of detainees.
