CHICAGO – Civil liberties advocates long have warned that torture and removal of habeus corpus, if tolerated against non-citizens, would soon be used against citizens as well.

Now that other shoe has dropped.

Native Chicagoan Donald Vance, 29, a Navy veteran who at least until recently was a stalwart supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, has come forward accusing U.S. forces in Iraq of imprisoning him without charges for over three months and torturing him during much of that time. Vance, a private security employee at the time of his arrest in Baghdad, will be filing suit against former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in federal court tomorrow for Rumsfeld's role in overseeing the military prison system in Iraq. A co-worker of Vance's, Nathan Ertel, is also expected to file suit early next year.

The torture techniques used against Vance and Ertel were many of the same ones secretly approved by Rumsfeld for use at Guantanamo – until his own Army attorneys protested and approval of the techniques was at least officially rescinded. They were subjected to extreme sleep deprivation, interrogation for hours at a time, held in an extremely cold cell without adequate clothing or blankets, and periodically denied food and water for long periods of time. During virtually his entire three month imprisonment at the notorious Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport, Vance was held in solitary confinement in a continuously lit, windowless cell. Ertel, who was imprisoned for one month, experienced much the same treatment. Heavy metal rock and country music were blasted at high volume to unnerve the other prisoners. For days at a time, when the prisoners drifted off to sleep, guards would bang on their doors to reawaken them. The only time the lights were off was when the prison's electric generators failed. The cell walls were caked with feces and insects.

To their knowledge, Vance and Ertel were the only American citizens imprisoned at Camp Cropper. Guards told them that their infrequent exits from their cells for exercise were done at midnight so that their presence at the camp could be kept secret.

How a War Supporter "Became" an Enemy Combatant

After graduating from high school in Chicago, Vance joined the Navy, spending two years on active duty and four years in the reserves. In reaction to 9/11, he volunteered to be reactivated if necessary, and in 2004, he parlayed his military experience into a job for The Sandi Group, a private contractor working in a joint venture with DynCorp International to provide security in Iraq. The Sandi Group, with 6,000 employees in Iraq, at one point claimed to be the country's largest private employer. DynCorp is described by CorpWatch "as the world's premiere renta-cop business" and has faced numerous charges of war profiteering and brutality. Vance's job at Sandi Group was as supervisor of security personnel, but he soon quit in disgust at what he saw as the firm's lack of concern for the welfare of their employees, and returned home to Chicago.

In the fall of 2005 Vance was approached by a former coworker at The Sandi Group to join his new firm, Shield Group Security (SGS), an outfit owned by Mustafa Al-Khudairi, who holds dual Iraqi/British citizenship. Like The Sandi Group, Shield provides security to private firms and NGOs, but also occupation forces and the Iraqi government itself. Again, Vance's job was to supervise other security employees and as such he had the opportunity to view some of the inner workings of SGS. Along with Ertel, another fellow Sandi group alumnus at SGS, Vance began to observe behavior that suggested possible rampant payoffs by SGS to local shieks, as well as possible illegal weapons sales.

On a trip back to Chicago in October 2005 for the funeral of his father, Vance contacted the FBI and agreed to be an unpaid informant for them about the activities at SGS. Working with Chicago-based FBI agent Travis Carlisle and two U.S. government contacts in Iraq, Vance frequently telephoned and emailed his observations of SGS, including the violent activities of his armed supervisor, Joseph Trimpert, who boasted of the brutal acts he committed against Iraqi civilians.

As Vance and Ertel attempted to improve SGS by reining in some of its most flagrant abuses, for example reporting Trimpert's activities to Al-Khudairi, they became targeted as malcontents by other employees and one of the shieks, Sheik Abu Bakir, who threatened to kidnap them. But in the end, it was the Americans who did the kidnapping.

Several days after Ertel attempted to resign from SGS in April, a high ranking SGS employee came to Ertel's and Vance's apartments in the armed SGS compound and confiscated what's known as their "Common Access Cards," devices which allow foreign contractors to travel from "Red Zone" areas like the SGS compound, to the Green Zone where the U.S. embassy is located.

Without the cards and an armed escort in the Red Zone, Vance and Ertel were sitting ducks for the rampant violence that is daily life in Baghdad. Worse, they feared a specific attempt by SGS employees to make them "disappear." Vance's U.S. handlers in Iraq advised the two to arm and barricade themselves in a room until U.S. forces could rescue them, which they soon did despite Trimpert's attempts to wave them off, taking the two to the U.S. embassy along with their laptop computers, which documented much of Vance's and Ertel's correspondence with their handlers.

A few hours after their debriefings at the embassy, though, Vance and Ertel were taken separately, handcuffed and blindfolded, to Camp Prosperity, a U.S. military base in the Green Zon. Repeatedly threatened with violence if they didn't comply, a few days later they were taken separately to Camp Cropper where they spent the rest of their imprisonment and most of the torture took place. They were denied medical care such that when Vance had to have a tooth pulled, guards confiscated the antibiotics and pain killers the dentist had provided, causing him an infection and great pain. All of the torture took place at the hands of U.S. soldiers and other U.S. officials.

On April 20th each of them received letters from an outfit known as the "Detainee Status Board" notifying them of a hearing to determine whether each of them was an "enemy combatant," a "security internee" or an "innocent civilian" (see a pdf copy of the Detainee Status Board letter to Vance). As with the hearings for alleged enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, the April 26th hearing of the Detainee Status Board was a legal joke. They were denied access to attorneys and not allowed to introduce exculpatory evidence such as their laptop computers. Documents were introduced as "evidence" against them, but they were not allowed to view them.

While the Board letter claimed that "reasonably available" witnesses could be called by the defendants, each was denied access to their local U.S. government handlers as witnesses, as well as each other, even though they were held in the same prison. Mimicking the best star chamber, the Detainee Status Board members appeared anonymously, in generic uniforms stripped of rank and name plates, and the defendants were not allowed to confront hostile witnesses.

At the end of his tribunal, Vance asked the board if his family knew where he was or that he even was alive. The board responded that they didn't know what, if anything, his family had been told. As it turns out, they had been vigorously contacting U.S. officials about his whereabouts, but were told nothing of his imprisonment.

Welcome home, Rummy

Despite this kangaroo court, on July 20th of this year Donald Vance was finally released, unceremoniously dumped by U.S. personnel at the Baghdad International Airport, without any documentation with which to leave the country. He soon made his way to Jordan and then back to Chicago. Ironically, now that he's "voluntarily" resigned as Secretary of Defense, defendant Donald Rumsfeld is also expected to be making his way home to his primary residence here in Chicago.

The tale of how even Donald Vance, an outspoken supporter of U.S. policy, could find his civil liberties thrown out the window, should be a cautionary tale about the real state of civil liberties for the majority of people in the U.S., who lack his protections of race (white) and political pedigree.

Tomorrow morning, Vance and his attorneys at the law office of Loevy and Loevy will file a lawsuit in federal court against former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, as the chief authority of the U.S. bases at which the tortures were conducted. Nathan Ertel, also represented by Loevy and Loevy, is expected to file suit early next year. After it is filed tomorrow morning, a copy of the lawsuit will be posted as an addendum to this article, along with a statement to the public by Mr. Vance.

The author of this article works for Loevy and Loevy, but he alone is solely responsible for the facts and opinions expressed herein.