The AP reports that detained American contractor and FBI informant sues Rumsfeld:

A former private security employee in Iraq says he was imprisoned by U.S. forces in a Baghdad military camp, held for three months without charges and denied access to an attorney, despite being an American citizen.

Navy veteran Donald Vance, 29, filed a federal lawsuit Monday against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for his role in overseeing the military prison system in Iraq.

In the lawsuit, Vance alleges that Rumsfeld's "policies and directives are completely inconsistent with fundamental constitutional and human rights."

Vance alleges he was held in "physically and mentally coercive conditions which are supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants." Those conditions included being subjected to artificial light 24 hours a day, long periods of solitary confinement, threats of excessive force, being forced to wear blindfolds and hoods, and occasional deprivation of food and water.

The NYT wrote about Vance's case yesterday.

Posted by Laura at December 19, 2006 08:57 AM