WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — A US federal judge earlier this week struck down a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against CIA-contracted psychologists and torture program designers James Mitchel and John Jessen, allowing the case to go to trial, which is scheduled for September 5.
"This is an interesting development, and the national mood — some 15 years after the state-funded CIA-contracted torture that these two psychologists designed — is very different than in the days after 9/11," Kwiatkowski noted.
The effort to bring private contractors working for the US government to trial for abuses was not unprecedented, Kwiatkowski recalled.
"The 2014 trial of State Department contracted Blackwater security personnel for murdering 17 Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nusoor Square in 2007 resulted in a number of convictions, with long sentences," she said. "These convictions, I believe, were possible in part to the changed national mood of the country, and anger at US foreign policy in general."
If the case proceeds to trial, it could have enormous consequences both in US law and public opinion, Kwiatkowski suggested.
"If a trial proceeds, the ramifications are tremendous, mainly because the trial will attract a lot of attention, and may serve as infotainment to a far larger sector of society than paid attention to the CIA rendition program in the 2000’s or read the 2014 Senate Report on Torture," she said.
Any settlement that the two psychologists are forced to make could permanently change the way that the US government does business with military contractors on major national security projects, Kwiatkowski advised.
The very precedent of allowing the trial to proceed, whatever its outcome was almost certain to encourage other victims of the torture program and other US government excesses to come forward and seek legal redress in the courts, Kwiatkowski predicted.
The wealth that the two psychologists had received for designing the torture program lead to expensive judgments against them, Kwiatkowski remarked.
"The resources of the accused psychologists could be used in a hefty settlement," she said.
Mitchell and Jessen’s defense team has already floated a legal defense comparison to the 1946 Nuremberg decisions that would seem to indemnify manufacturers for government torture and murder using their products and materials, but it might not hold up., Kwiatkowski noted.
This new national mood already alarmed US policymakers, Kwiatkowski stated.
"The US Government is extremely concerned that its contractors not be thrown under the bus, and will be paying close attention to this current case," she said.
If there is a settlement, or a guilty verdict by a jury in the case against Mitchel and Jessen, it will drive contractors to the US government to demand clauses in their contracts that they are indemnified for their actions, Kwiatkowski cautioned.
