Tortured Prosecutions: Holding Private Military Contractors Accountable
Tortured Prosecutions: Holding Private Military Contractors Accountable
This chapter argues that the vast increase in the U.S. use of military contractors to fight the War on Terror has created the potential for illegality and abuse by U.S. military contractors but little ability to hold them accountable. Exemplifying this is the difficulty that the U.S. faced in prosecuting Blackwater employees for their massacre of Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in the course of providing security services for the U.S. State Department. Due to the lack of extraterritorial jurisdiction over the activities of many such contractors, the laws that apply to military personnel, such as the UCMJ and the MEJA, do not provide grounds for criminal or civil actions against contractors in many actual and possible circumstances. This chapter reviews the possibilities for using MEJA, SMTJ, ATS, UCMJ, the Anti-torture Statute, and foreign law against rogue or criminal contractors, and finds holes in the scope of each for securing justice. The chapter goes on to consider some recent proposals, such as the Civil Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Statute (CEJA) and extensions to existing law, to plug the gaps that make it difficult to prosecute or sue contractors for acts such as torture.
Keywords: Alien Tort Statute, Anti-torture Statute, extraterritorial jurisdiction, MEJA, military contractors, Nisour Square massacre, SMTJ, torture, UCMJ, War on Terror
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
