If accountability for torture that was done by employees and contractors of the CIA is going to happen, it will have to come from elsewhere than the US. And it will happen, at least in some minimal way:
CIA Officials Linked to Torture Face Possible Prosecution, Future Stuck in U.S.
CIA officials linked to brutal interrogation tactics in a U.S. Senate report on torture may be prosecuted or sued overseas for their conduct, a threat that may keep them confined to the U.S. for the rest of their lives.
“The reality is that none of the individuals involved, particularly those whose names are known, should ever travel outside the United States again,” said Beth Van Schaack, who teaches international criminal justice and human rights at Stanford University. She noted the potential for suits in foreign courts under “expansive principles of jurisdiction.”
Case in point: in Italy in 2009, 23 Americans, mostly CIA, were convicted in absentia for kidnapping an Islamic cleric and rendering him to Egypt to be tortured. The accused CIA agents failed to appear at trial, and the station chief had his retirement home seized to help pay the million-euro damages award to the cleric and his wife.
CIA officials linked to the torture details released Dec. 9 in the Senate report may fare worse if countries exposed in the agency’s extraordinary rendition program are pressured to bring criminal cases. About 21 European countries cooperated in the U.S. practice of transferring terror suspects to a foreign country for detention and questioning without legal proceedings in American courts.
“As a result of the additional disclosures that are now public, there is going to be more pressure for prosecutions and accountability abroad in part because U.S. courts have failed to provide any accountability at home,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project. “Pandora’s box was opened when the CIA made the decision to torture. The movement and need for accountability is ongoing.” ....
In the past, there was “no stomach” in the U.S. for prosecutions over the treatment of detainees and that may not have changed, said Robert K. Goldman, an American University law professor and expert on human rights law.
“I think criminal prosecution is out of the question” in the U.S., Goldman said. “The fact that we don’t prosecute does not preclude other countries from exercising jurisdiction under certain circumstances.”...
[T]orture victims have filed at least six cases, two of which have been decided in the European Court on Human Rights.... In December 2012 in the court’s first case involving secret detention sites, it ruled a German national’s account of torture at facilities in the Macedonian capital of Skopje and in Afghanistan was established beyond a reasonable doubt....
That ruling was followed by another in July finding Poland at fault for the torture of terror suspects Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, who said they were held at a CIA “black site” in the country.
Other claims have been filed against Romania and Lithuania for enabling CIA secret detentions without legal basis.
Similar lawsuits brought in the US have been dismissed on grounds of secrecy or immunity, and there isn't any realistic reason to believe suits brought after the release of the Senate's torture report will have any more likelihood of success. That's not true however for prosecution of human rights offenses overseas.
There isn’t “any realistic domestic liability” against agents and officials involved in interrogations, David B. Rivkin Jr., a partner at the law firm BakerHostetler, said, noting the government could assert a number of immunities and defenses. The real threat is prosecution overseas for possible human rights offenses, Rivkin said.
Countries with long-arm statutes, including many in Europe, are capable of indicting people for offenses not committed in their territory. Spain, Belgium and Italy, and to a lesser extent the U.K. and France, have a history of such actions, Rivkin said.
The report has “put a bullseye on the people involved,” he said. “It’s almost inviting foreign governments and prosecutors to do something.”
No more nice European vacations for the CIA torturers, and nervous looking over their shoulders wherever they travel. It's not much, but it may be all we can hope for in the way of accountability since the top officials in the US government seem to have completely lost all moral compass.