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Justice Department ends criminal probe of detainee deaths
The Justice Department will not file criminal charges against CIA officials after an investigation into the deaths of two detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday.
Justice is closing its investigation into the detainees’ deaths and declining to prosecute because “the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt,” Holder said in a statement.
The end of the criminal investigation concludes the Justice Department’s inquiry into interrogation practices that occurred under the George W. Bush administration after 9/11.
In 2009, Holder asked Assistant U.S. Attorney of Connecticut John Durham to investigate whether laws were broken when CIA officials detained and interrogated 101 detainees after 9/11.
Holder’s decision to launch the wide review of the interrogation cases, which he said stemmed from a 2004 CIA Inspector General report, was criticized by lawmakers, Bush administration officials and members of the intelligence community.
When Holder announced the 2009 probe, former Vice President Dick Cheney, a prominent defender of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding, called it a political investigation, while Sen. John McCain — who has criticized waterboarding — said it was a mistake.
In his statement, Holder said that the conclusion of the investigation still did not resolve the issues surrounding enhanced interrogation techniques.
“Our inquiry was limited to a determination of whether prosecutable offenses were committed and was not intended to, and does not resolve, broader questions regarding the propriety of the examined conduct,” Holder said.
The Justice Department has not identified the two detainees who were killed in U.S. custody. Previous media reports say they were Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in 2003 in Abu Grahib, and Gul Rahman, who died in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, called the Salt Pit, in 2002.
