Raleigh, N.C. – A former CIA contract employee was sentenced Tuesday to nearly 8 1/2 years in prison for beating an Afghan detainee who later died.
David Passaro, 40, was accused of hitting Abdul Wali with a flashlight and kicking him in the groin during a two-day interrogation at a remote military base in Afghanistan in July 2003. Wali died within 48 hours of the interrogation, after complaining of abdominal pain and an inability to urinate.
Passaro was the first American civilian charged with mistreating a detainee during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was found guilty last year of assault and could have gotten 11 1/2 years in prison.
U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle sentenced Passaro to eight years and four months and has said that a lack of an autopsy probably kept Passaro from being charged with murder.
Defense attorney Joe Gilbert argued his client should be given a lighter sentence because of his military service and because the death happened in a hostile nation during wartime.
Prosecutors said Wali, an Afghan farmer, came forward after learning he had been implicated in rocket attacks on a military base in Afghanistan.
The local governor, Said Akbar, wrote to the judge last week, saying Wali’s death had become a tool for terrorist recruiting and was “a huge setback for Afghanistan’s national reconciliation efforts.”
Passaro told the judge he was only trying to do his job well but regretted how he treated Wali.
“He is a human being,” Passaro said. “I failed him. If I could go back and change things, it would have never happened. I wish I had never gone in to talk to him.”
