"This case is part of our effort to bring accountability for torture and other serious violations of international law arising out of the so-called war on terror and invasion of Iraq," the Centre for Constitutional Rights, whose legal team is representing the Iraqi plaintiffs, said in a statement before the trial was due to begin.

"Our clients are Iraqi civilians who were ultimately released without ever being charged with a crime.

"They all continue to suffer from physical and mental injuries caused by the torture and other abuse they endured."

An artist's sketch of the trial in Virginia. Dana Verkouteren / AP

C/o Andy Worthington: 

We're pleased to announce that a new feature film about Guantánamo, "I Am Gitmo," will receive its U.S. premiere in New York and Los Angeles this week and next.

Written and directed by Philippe Diaz, and produced via his Cinema Libre Studio, which specializes in socially conscious independent films and documentaries, "I Am Gitmo" tells the fictional story of Gamel Sadek, an Egyptian schoolteacher, married and living with his wife and children in Kandahar, who is kidnapped, tortured and sent to Guantánamo based on a mistaken assumption that he is an associate of Osama bin Laden...

The poster for "I Am Gitmo."

The trial is scheduled to begin tomorrow, April 15, at the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, and will be the first time that Abu Ghraib survivors are able to bring their claims of torture to a US jury.

Retired Army Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led an investigation into the scandal, is among those expected to testify. "Abu Ghraib emerged from a structure developed by senior officials in the Bush White House and by those who thought it was necessary to blindly advance the Bush administration's goals," he said at the time.

Taguba singled out John Yoo for legal memoranda that produced, in Taguba's words, "despicable torture and abuse." "Abu Ghraib was not just happenstance. It was a morbid consequence of a policy that emanated from the Office of Legal Counsel and the Justice Department."