DOJ Won't Prosecute Anyone in Deaths of Two Overseas Detainees Interrogated by CIA
Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that he will not bring any prosecutions in the deaths of two overseas detainees who were interrogated by CIA officials.
Holder did not identify the detainees who died, but prior reports have suggested they were Gul Rahman,who died at a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, and Manadel al-Jamadi, who died while in CIA custody at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, report the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.).
“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,” Holder said in a statement. The announcement ends an investigation by special prosecutor John Durham, according to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.
The ACLU and Human Rights First released statements expressing disappointment with the decision. ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said the failure to hold anyone accountable is “nothing short of a scandal.”
“The Justice Department has declined to bring charges against the officials who authorized torture, the lawyers who sought to legitimate it, and the interrogators who used it,” Jaffer said. “It has successfully shut down every legal suit meant to hold officials civilly liable.”
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog published Holder’s announcement.
