(CNN) — A civil trial in opposition to a US protection contractor accused of participating in and directing abuse at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq started Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, twenty years after revelations of horrific torture first surfaced.

The trial began with testimony from one of many Iraqi males, who mentioned he was overwhelmed, interrogated and left certain and bare for hours on finish on the notorious web site. The continuing marks the primary time these Abu Ghraib survivors are in a position to carry their claims of torture to a US jury.

“I needed to die,” Salah Al-Ejaili, one of many three plaintiffs within the case, instructed the jury Monday, recounting the “worry and terror” he felt in the course of the 40 days he was held in Abu Ghraib.

Al-Ejaili and two different Iraqi males are suing navy contract firm CACI, who they are saying was in control of the interrogations at Abu Ghraib, a US Military detention middle for captured Iraqis. The invention of graphic pictures depicting guards abusing detainees sparked world outrage in 2004.

CACI has denied wrongdoing.

Al-Ejaili, a contract journalist who now lives in Sweden after searching for asylum there, detailed how people on the jail tortured him earlier than interrogation classes in November and December 2003.

The individuals on the jail, who Al-Ejaili described as carrying navy and civilian clothes, would place a black bag over his head, pressure him to strip bare and certain his fingers to a wall for lengthy stretches in a chilly, empty room.

He detailed the humiliation, beatings and psychological torture he endured underneath the blinding lights and loud music of the jail, the place sleep was almost unimaginable.

At one level throughout his detainment and torture, Al-Ejaili testified that he vomited black bile, along with his abdomen feeling as if it “wished to come back out.” A member of the US navy ordered him to mop up the vomit along with his personal pink jail uniform, he mentioned.

“We might hear the screams of the detainees,” throughout interrogation classes, Al-Ejaili testified.

Throughout opening statements, John O’Connor, an lawyer for CACI, positioned the blame for the torture at Abu Ghraib on “a handful of dangerous apples” who have been US navy police.

These “sadistic” people, O’Connor mentioned, have already been tried and – in some circumstances – sentenced to jail after being court-martialed.

“There’s no query that abuse occurred,” O’Connor mentioned, including that there was no proof CACI workers harmed the three plaintiffs and that the US navy was liable for the administration of the jail, not CACI.

CACI was employed by the US navy as a result of they have been “dreadfully quick” on interrogators O’Connor mentioned, telling the jury that CACI was a “respectable firm.”

Baher Azmy, an lawyer for the plaintiffs, mentioned CACI interrogators instructed and took part within the abuse and that whereas the jury couldn’t clear “the stain Abu Ghraib” has left on the nation, they might present some “justice.”

The civil trial is anticipated to final two weeks and is about to characteristic testimony – over video convention – from the opposite two plaintiffs who nonetheless stay in Iraq, in addition to members of the US navy convicted for his or her function within the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

US District Decide Leonie Brinkema is presiding over the case.

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