On Monday, a federal appeals court refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two U.S. citizens against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and unnamed others for developing, authorizing and using harsh interrogation techniques against detainees in Iraq. Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel were working for a private U.S. government contractor, Shield Group Security, in 2006 when they witnessed the sale of U.S. government weapons to Iraqi rebel groups for money and alcohol. After they became FBI informants and collaborated with an investigation into their employer, the company revoked their credentials for entering Iraq’s so-called Green Zone, effectively barring them from the safest part of the country. Shortly afterward, they were arrested and detained by U.S. troops, moved to the U.S.-run prison at Camp Cropper, and subjected to extreme sleep deprivation, interrogated for hours at a time, kept in a very cold cell, and denied food and water for long periods. They were eventually released and never charged with a crime. For more on his story, we speak with Donald Vance, a U.S. Navy veteran, and with Andrea Prasow, the senior counsel in the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch.

Transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: For years, human rights groups have attempted to file a lawsuit against former Bush administration officials for their role in crafting policies that led to torture in Iraq. Well, on Monday, in a move that has shocked some in the legal community, a federal appeals court refused to dismiss a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and unnamed others for developing, authorizing and using harsh interrogation techniques against prisoners in Iraq.

The details of the case may surprise you. The lawsuit was filed not ...

On Apr. 16, 2006, for reasons still unknown to them, two U.S. contractors in Iraq's Red Zone were handcuffed, blindfolded and transported to Camp Cropper, a U.S. military facility located a few miles from Baghdad International Airport.

There, Donald Vance, a Navy veteran from Illinois and Nathan Ertel, a U.S. government contractor hailing from Virginia, experienced a "nightmarish scene", in which they were held incommunicado in solitary confinement and subject to physical and psychological torture for the duration of their imprisonment. 

This Monday, nearly five years since their ordeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago ruled that the plaintiffs could move forward with a lawsuit against the person who allegedly approved the operation – former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. 

Held without a trial or court hearing and tortured – Ertel for six weeks, Vance for nearly three months – the plaintiffs are suing for damages rendered against them in Camp Cropper, where Rumsfeld and several other unnamed officials allegedly "developed, authorized and used harsh interrogation techniques [on them]", thus violating their basic civil, constitutional and human rights. 

Upholding a 2010 lower court ruling on the issue, the three-judge panel voted two-to-one Monday to allow the case to move forward, on the basis that "[the plaintiffs'] complaint alleges in detail that they were detained and illegally tortured by U.S. military [and] released from military custody without ever being charged with a crime." 

In the final court decision, Judge David Hamilton