A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit filed by four former Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib against the military contractor CACI International. The men had accused the firm’s employees of taking part in the torture and abuse of prisoners. In a 2-to-1 ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the case on the grounds that CACI should be immune from prosecution because the company’s employees were under US military authority. The dissenting opinion was written by Judge Merrick Garland. He argued that there is no judicial precedent that would prohibit the prisoners from suing government contractors. Garland wrote, “The plaintiffs in these cases allege that they were beaten, electrocuted, raped, subjected to attacks by dogs and otherwise abused by private contractors. At the current stage of the litigation we must accept these allegations as true.”