The U.S.
Department of Justice announced Thursday that it had closed its three-year
criminal investigation of two overseas CIA interrogations without bringing any
charges.
In a statement,
Attorney General Eric Holder said, “the Department has declined prosecution
because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a
conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The Justice
Department launched a criminal investigation in 2009 over alleged mistreatment
of two detainees who died in CIA custody. The investigation sought to uncover
whether any unauthorized interrogation techniques were used by CIA agents in
violation of federal law.
The Justice
Department did not identify the two detainees who perished, but media reports
claim the two were Gul Rahman and Manadel al-Jamadi.
Rahman died of
hypothermia in Afghanistan in 2002 after being shackled and left half-naked in a
prison cell. Manadel al-Jamadi died in Iraq in 2003 while being suspended by his
wrists. Raw Story
The ACLU on
Thursday said the Justice Department's decision to close probes of CIA
interrogations without charges is "yet another entry in what is already a
shameful record.” Politico “That the
Justice Department will hold no one accountable for the killing of prisoners in
CIA custody is nothing short of a scandal,” ACLU deputy legal director Jameel
Jaffer said in a statement. Politico Another group,
Human Rights First (HRF), said it had documented 100 cases of detainee
mistreatment in 2006 and perpetrators were punished in only 12 of those cases.
Politico “Attorney
General Holder’s announcement is disappointing because it’s well documented that
in the aftermath of 9/11 torture and abuse was widespread and systematic," HRF
counsel Melina Milazzo said in a statement. Politico The
investigation, which was launched in 2008 by federal prosecutor John Durham, had
a remit of establishing whether the treatment of detainees broke guidelines
issued by lawyers of the administration of former President George W Bush. BBC
News Under Bush's
presidency that guidance included a variety of techniques, including
"waterboarding," or simulated drowning, now officially regarded as torture by
the Obama administration. BBC News
AHT/HJ
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