Attorney General Eric Holder (Larry Downing/REUTERS)
There might finally be
justice for two of the many victims of the Bush/Cheney torture regime.
June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Attorney General Eric Holder ordered a criminal investigation into the deaths of two prisoners in U.S. custody overseas following a U.S. Justice Department review of CIA interrogations.
The department determined that an expanded criminal investigation into allegations of CIA mistreatment of other detainees isn't warranted, Holder said in a statement today.
The probe is examining the 2002 death of Gul Rahman in a facility in Afghanistan and 2003 death of Manadel al-Jamadi at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity and wasn't authorized to comment publicly. Holder didn't identify the detainees and Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment.
This comes at the end of a probe by federal prosecutor John Durham, who was appointed originally by Bush AG Michael Mukasey in 2008 to conduct a criminal investigation into the destruction of interrogation videotapes by the Central Intelligence Agency. The scope of his investigation was expanded by Holder in August of 2009 to include an investigation of CIA torture of detainees, with the clear intention that the probe would be limited: "I made clear at that time that the Department would not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees." In other words, assume the Bybee torture memos were the law.
Of the 99 torture deaths Durham investigated, two will be probed further for criminal prosecution. ""I welcome the news that the broader inquiries are behind us," says departing CIA director Leon Panetta. "We are now finally about to close this chapter of our agency's history." Close the book on the agency's illegality and use of torture, and murder. We sure want to pretend like that never happened, and pretend that officials at the highest level of government never crafted and operated an interrogation program that subjected prisoners to unimaginable cruelty and violated both international and domestic law.
But two criminal investigations are better than nothing.