By Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) -A Pennsylvania man has been charged by U.S. federal prosecutors with torturing an employee at a construction project that the defendant was managing in Iraq’s Kurdistan region in 2015 after the worker raised concerns about a program to produce weapons parts.
Ross Roggio, of Stroudsburg, was accused of suffocating the victim with a belt, threatening to cut off one of the individual’s fingers and directing Kurdish soldiers to inflict other severe physical and mental pain and suffering, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement https://bit.ly/3oZbp5x on Friday.
The torture allegations were investigated by the FBI.
Roggio, 53, is the second American citizen – and the fourth person overall – to be charged with violating a U.S. torture statute that went into effect in 1994, the department said. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit torture and one count of torture.
“The grand jury charges that the defendant directed and participated in the systematic torture of an employee over the course of 39 days by Kurdish soldiers in Iraq,” said John Gurganus, the U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania handling the case.
Roggio and the Roggio Consulting Company LLC previously were charged in a 37-count indictment in 2018 with illegally exporting firearms parts and tools from the United States to Iraq as part of the weapons project in Kurdistan.
The new indictment added the torture charges to the previously charged offenses.
Roggio Consulting did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Justice Department said Roggio was managing a project in 2015 to construct a factory and produce weapons in Kurdistan when one of his employees raised concerns. Roggio arranged for Kurdish soldiers to abduct the employee and detain the worker at a Kurdish military compound, it added.
If convicted, Roggio faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each of the torture charges as well as a maximum total statutory penalty of 705 years in prison for the remaining 37 counts, the department said.
The victim was not identified in the department’s announcement on Friday.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Will Dunham)
