SULAIMANI (ESTA) — An American man has been charged by U.S. federal prosecutors with torturing an employee at a construction project in the Kurdistan Region in 2015, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday.
In a statement, the justice department said Ross Roggio, 53, was detained on charges alleging that he tortured a victim in the Kurdistan Region in 2015.
Roggio of Stroudsburg is 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.
Roggio and the Roggio Consulting Company were previously charged in 2018 with illegally exporting firearms parts and tools from the United States to Iraq as part of a weapons project in the Kurdistan Region.
Roggio was managing a project in 2015 to construct a factory and produce weapons in the Kurdistan Region when one of his employees raised concerns, the statement read.
He arranged for Kurdish soldiers to abduct the employee and detain the worker at a Kurdish military compound, the justice department said.
“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,” U.S. Attorney John C. Gurganus for the Middle District of Pennsylvania said.
“This defendant leveraged his position and used foreign soldiers in order to intimidate and coerce someone who was a threat to the success of his corrupt scheme,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Jacqueline Maguire.
Roggio led multiple interrogation sessions during which he directed Kurdish soldiers to “suffocate the victim with a bag, taser the victim in the groin and other areas of his body, beat the victim with fists and rubber hoses, jump violently on the victim’s chest while wearing military boots, and threaten to cut off one of the victim’s fingers while applying pressure to the finger with a large cutting tool”.
“The superseding indictment also alleges that on at least one occasion, Roggio wrapped his belt around the victim’s neck, yanked the victim off the ground, and suspended him in the air, causing the victim to lose consciousness,” the U.S. justice department said.
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.
