|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
August 23rd,
2009 - CIA Officer Disciplined for Alleged Gun Use in Interrogation |
|
CIA Officer Disciplined for
Alleged Gun Use in Interrogation Bush Officials Filed No Charges Over Tactics in Terror Case By Joby Warrick & R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post August 23, 2009 A CIA officer who allegedly
used a gun to intimidate a captured al-Qaeda suspect was formally disciplined
for violating the agency's rules for conducting interrogations, but Bush
administration Justice Department officials ultimately declined to file
charges against him, according to two former intelligence officials familiar
with the case. The officer, who has not
been identified, was immediately called back to CIA headquarters to face an
internal accountability board and was "reprimanded and reassigned"
for committing acts outside the CIA's legal guidelines for interrogating
terrorism suspects. At the time of the 2002 incident, the guidelines
permitted the use of sleep deprivation and waterboarding - simulated drowning
- on some suspects, according to a former senior intelligence official who
closely followed the events. The CIA officer eventually
resigned, two former agency officials confirmed Saturday. In a separate incident,
interrogators reportedly used an electric drill to intimidate the same
detainee, al-Qaeda commander Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the group's former
chief in the Persian Gulf and the alleged mastermind of the deadly USS Cole
suicide bombing in 2000. "The agency, where
appropriate, took its own disciplinary action when the Department of Justice
declined prosecution," CIA spokesman George Little said Saturday. A spokesman for the agency
declined to comment on details of the episodes, but current and former
government officials said the use of the gun is described in a classified CIA
inspector general's report, which is slated to be released in declassified
form on Monday. A Justice Department
spokesman declined to comment on the contents of the report Saturday. The CIA disciplinary panel
was convened within weeks of the officer allegedly bringing a handgun into an
interrogation room at a secret detention facility in an apparent attempt to
convince Nashiri he would be killed if he failed to cooperate, U.S. officials
said. The 2004 IG report describes
both incidents. Some of its details, including the interrogators' alleged use
of the gun and power drill, were made public in an article on Newsweek
magazine's Web site late Friday. The magazine also reported that officers
staged a mock execution by firing a gun in the cell next to Nashiri's to make
him think another detainee had been executed. A federal judge in New York
ordered the release of the report in response to a lawsuit by the American
Civil Liberties Union. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been reviewing
the document in an effort to decide whether to launch an investigation into
the CIA's coercive interrogation methods. Some officials involved in
the case viewed the use of a gun during interrogation as a possible violation
of a U.S. law that prohibits threatening detainees with imminent death. But
Justice Department lawyers reviewed the case and declined to file charges,
according to several former and current intelligence officials who tracked
the case. It was unclear why the lawyers took that position. A. John Radsan, a former
federal prosecutor who also served as assistant general counsel at the CIA,
said such a case might be difficult to successfully prosecute. "The victims are not
sympathetic. Witnesses may not talk. Evidence may be gone," Radsan said.
"If anyone is indicted, there will be the usual graymail. The defendant
is going to push [Justice] to reveal things about the program that will even
make this administration uncomfortable. The defendant will say whatever he
did was reasonable reliance on advice from government lawyers." When interviewed by the Red
Cross in 2006, Nashiri did not specifically describe the alleged mock
execution but said he had been threatened with "sodomy, and the arrest
and rape of his family," according to a copy of the humanitarian group's
secret report to the Bush administration in February 2007, which was leaked
to the New York Review of Books this year. Nine of the 14 former CIA
prisoners interviewed reported being subjected to "threats of
ill-treatment," it said. The U.S. anti-torture
statute bans acts intended to inflict severe mental or physical pain or
suffering resulting from, among other things, "the threat of imminent death"
or threats of being "subjected to death." "Mock executions or
threats to an individual's life produce extreme fear and loss of control in
the victim," said Scott Allen, medical adviser for Physicians for Human
Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group that campaigns against torture.
"These kinds of threats can have serious, long-lasting psychological
impact." However, an August 2002
Justice Department legal memo in effect at the time of the episode
interpreted the anti-torture statute to apply only to the deliberate
infliction of suffering or pain that caused prolonged mental harm. In 2006,
the U.S. military explicitly revised its field manual to prohibit mock
executions. Allen's group said in a June
2008 report that in interviews of 11 detainees who had been held in U.S.
military custody overseas, "almost all ... reported being threatened
with severe harm, most commonly through verbal threats during
interrogations." The group reported that
"some threats were terrifying claims that the detainee or members of his
family would be killed or severely harmed - or that the detainee would never
be released." Staff writers Karen DeYoung
and Carrie Johnson and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this
report. © 2009 The Washington Post
Company External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/22/AR2009082202287.html |