A CIA homicide and coverup that was never prosecuted
My Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeks to lift the veil of secrecy in a 2003 Abu Ghraib death that was blamed on Navy SEALs
Even if you’ve never heard the name Manadel al-Jamadi, there’s a good chance you’ve seen his face.
His beaten and bloodied visage appeared in one of the nightmarish images from the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison scandal. US soldiers pulling guard duty on the night shift in the Iraqi prison took turns giving a thumbs-up over Jamadi’s ice-packed corpse.
Why does this long-ago death in a forgotten war still matter? It matters to the Navy SEALs who captured Jamadi. They were the only ones to face charges in a homicide they did not commit.
Jamadi was captured in a nighttime raid by Navy SEALs on November 4, 2003. He was handed over to the CIA for interrogation in the Abu Ghraib shower room. Within hours, he was dead. An autopsy ruled the death a homicide.
The only people in the room when Jamadi died were a CIA polygraph examiner/interrogator and a translator. In 2005, I was the first to report that Jamadi died in a torture position. Yet no one from the agency has ever been held publicly accountable in Jamadi’s death.
The spy agency has fought for years to keep a lid on what happened in the shower room. We’ve been able to force the CIA to reveal some startling new facts about the case, but we still have a ways to go.
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