US President Barack Obama has left the door open to the possibility of legally pursuing those responsible for "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the Bush era.

Obama said on Tuesday that it will be up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether or not to prosecute the former officials.

"With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said during a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan at the White House, CNN reported. Jordan has been one of the destinations for “extraordinary renditions”, whereby suspects were dispatched to “allied states” for application of interrogations under torture, as US law prohibits such practices on US soil.

Obama voiced concern over the issue which he warned was getting overly politicized.

"There's a host of very complicated issues involved there. As a general deal, I think we should be looking forward and not backward. I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations."

Yet, Obama once again stated that CIA officers should not be prosecuted so long as they acted within parameters spelled out by government superiors who held that such practices were “lawful” at the time.

A number of US government legal advisers have come under close scrutiny for their roles in formulating opinions that “legally justified” interrogation techniques that have been widely condemned by human rights organizations and others as torture. One of those legal experts is Professor John Yoo of the University of California at Berkeley. From 2001 to 2003 he worked in the United States Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, and he issued legal advice which permitted torture to be carried out on suspects. There have been calls by human rights advocates for his indictment for facilitating torture.

The US administration has released memos which were written by officials of former President George W. Bush's administration to justify “harsh” CIA interrogations of terror suspects.

Far from quieting calls for release of more information about the methods used by US operatives on captives, the published memos have caused outrage as they revealed - among other things - two captured Muslim suspects were subjected to “waterboarding” a total of 266 times. Waterboarding is a torture technique where the victim is subjected to a near-drowning experience.

Obama said last week's release of the interrogation memos was "one of the tougher decisions I've had to make as president."

The memos provided the legal framework for a program of interrogations of 'war on terror' detainees that included techniques widely regarded as torture such as waterboarding.

Whether or not President Obama decides to give immunity to the lawyers and operatives involved in torture, these individuals could still face arrest and prosecution in other countries for crimes against humanity under the auspices of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.


RB/AAM/HGL