Washington ? The Justice Department handed down its first indictment Thursday in the investigations of detainee abuse, charging a civilian contractor from North Carolina in connection with the beating death of an Afghan prisoner last summer.

David A. Passaro, 38, who was described by a government official as a CIA contractor with a U.S. military special operations background, faces up to 40 years in prison and $1 million in fines for Abdul Wali’s death June 21, 2003, at an Army base in northeast Afghanistan.

“Mr. Passaro denies all allegations,” said his lawyer, Gerald Beaver of Fayetteville, N.C. “We’re going to try this case in the courtroom.”

The indictment charges that Passaro, 38, beat Wali with his “hands, feet and a large flashlight” during a two-day interrogation at Asadabad base near the Pakistani border. Wali, who was suspected in attacks on the base, died on the third day.

An Arab news report last year quoted an Afghan official as saying that Wali had died from a heart attack and that no signs of assault were visible.

Wali was the son of Bacha Khan Jadran, a warlord who, according to the Afghan Islamic Press, had opposed Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Passaro was arrested Thursday in Fayetteville and ordered held without bond pending a detention hearing Tuesday. He’s charged with two counts each of assault and assault with a deadly weapon.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft called the beating a brutal assault, and said the indictment was a sign of the administration’s intolerance for the abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“The American people are familiar by now with the images of prisoner abuse committed in our detention facilities overseas,” Ashcroft said. “Today, a wholly different and more accurate picture of our nation emerges. Today, we see a nation dedicated to its ideals of freedom, respect for human dignity, to its insistence for justice and the rule of law.”

Seven soldiers have been charged in military courts with alleged abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.