Human rights group describes outcome as ‘nothing short of a scandal’ after investigation into treatment of detainees is closed.
The US justice department has announced it has ended its investigation into CIA interrogations of terrorist detainees without bringing criminal charges.
The decision in the inquiries of the deaths of two terrorist suspects marks the end of a wide-ranging criminal investigation by federal prosecutor John Durham into interrogation practices during the presidency of George Bush.
Durham has looked into the treatment of 101 detainees in US custody since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Durham’s inquiry into another episode involving the CIA began in January 2008 when the justice department chose him to conduct a criminal investigation into the agency’s destruction of videotapes it had made of its interrogations of terrorist suspects.
In August 2009, attorney general Eric Holder expanded Durham’s mandate to include a preliminary review of the CIA’s interrogation of specific detainees overseas. In June 2011, Holder approved Durham’s request to move into a full criminal investigation of the two deaths.
The 2009 expansion followed the public release of an internal CIA inspector general’s report that revealed agency interrogators once threatened to kill a 9/11 suspect’s children, and suggested another would be forced to watch his mother be sexually assaulted. The report said some CIA interrogators went beyond Bush administration restrictions that gave them wide latitude to use severe tactics such as waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique.
About the just-completed investigation of the two detainees’ deaths, Holder said that “based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths, the department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”
IPS, By Jim Lobe, September 1
Washington – U.S. human rights groups have roundly condemned Thursday’s announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder that the Justice Department will not pursue prosecutions of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers who may have been responsible for the deaths of two prisoners in their custody.
The announcement appeared to mark the end of all efforts by the U.S. government to hold CIA interrogators accountable for torture and mistreating prisoners detained during the so-called “Global War on Terror†launched shortly after the Al Qaeda attacks on Sep. 11, 2001.
For rights activists and for supporters of President Barack Obama, it was the latest in a series of disappointing decisions, including the failure to close the detention facility at the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba. They had hoped Obama would not only end the excesses of President George W. Bush’s prosecution of the war, but also conduct a full investigation of those excesses, if not prosecute those responsible.
“This is truly a disastrous development,†said Laura Pitter, counter-terrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “To now have no accountability whatsoever for any of the CIA abuses for which there are now mountains of evidence is just appalling.â€
Obama’s justice department grants final immunity to Bush’s CIA torturers
By closing two cases of detainees tortured to death, Obama has put the US beyond any accountability under the rule of law
The Guardian, By Glenn Greenwald, August 31
The Obama administration’s aggressive, full-scale whitewashing of the “war on terror” crimes committed by Bush officials is now complete. Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the closing without charges of the only two cases under investigation relating to the US torture program: one that resulted in the 2002 death of an Afghan detainee at a secret CIA prison near Kabul, and the other the 2003 death of an Iraqi citizen while in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib. This decision, says the New York Times Friday, “eliminat[es] the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the CIA”.
To see what a farce this is, it is worthwhile briefly to review the timeline of how Obama officials acted to shield Bush torturers from all accountability. During his 2008 campaign for president, Obama repeatedly vowed that, while he opposed “partisan witch-hunts”, he would instruct his attorney general to “immediately review” the evidence of criminality in these torture programs because “nobody is above the law.” Yet, almost immediately after winning the 2008 election, Obama, before he was even inaugurated, made clear that he was opposed to any such investigations, citing what he called “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”.
Obama, before he was even inaugurated, made clear that he was opposed to any such investigations, citing what he called “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”.
Consequently, this theory should absolve any criminal of a crime he/she committed in the past, shouldn’t it?
The law is an ass.
“The great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed is to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well” ~ Paulo Freire