Ex-CIA Contractor Passaro Appeals 8-year Sentence

Lately, with Obama’s decisions to close down Guantanamo and give enemy combatant Ali Al-Marri a criminal trial, there’s been a lot of talk about human rights and the mistreatment of detainees. In this climate, it will be especially interesting to see what happens in the current case of David Passaro’s appeal.

Passaro, a former CIA contractor who also held a civilian job as a medic with the U.S. Army in Fort Bragg (North Carolina), was the very first American civilian charged of abusing a detainee in connection with Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also the first person with a connection to the CIA to have been convicted in a post-9/11 abuse case.

Passaro is now appealing the sentence of eight years in a federal prison for beating detainee Abdul Wali, which included hitting him repeatedly with a metal flashlight and kicking him in the groin. Wali was a local Afghan farmer suspected of being involved in a series of rocket attacks aimed at the U.S. military base in Afghanistan where he was later interrogated. The mistreatment took place while Wali was being interrogated over the course of two days in June 2003. Wali later died – allegedly as a direct result of the internal injuries caused by Passaro’s assault.

Last Friday, the U.S. government and David Passaro’s lawyers presented arguments before a panel of three Court of Appeals judges in Richmond, Virginia.

image courtesy of www.thewe.cc