Justice Department Office Says Detainee Abuse Cases Should Be Re-Opened

News
reports today indicate that the Justice Department's Office of
Professional Responsibility has advised Attorney General Holder to
re-open investigations into almost a dozen cases of prisoner abuse by
the CIA in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The news comes in advance of the
expected release later today of the CIA Inspector General report which
is said to document in detail brutal interrogation tactics used by the
CIA. The report is being released as part of a Freedom of Information
Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking
information about detainee abuse overseas.

The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project:

"It is encouraging that the Justice
Department's ethics office recognizes that prior decisions to cut off
investigations of serious abuse cases were ill-advised, and that those
who broke the law must be held accountable. It is critical, though,
that the scope of any criminal investigation not be limited at the
outset to exclude the investigation of senior officials who authorized
torture or wrote the memos that were used to justify it. An
investigation that begins and ends with so-called 'rogue' interrogators
would be indefensible given the evidence of high-level involvement that
is already in the public domain. Nor should any 'good faith' limitation
be used as a shield for interrogators who knew or should have known
that they were violating the law."

More information can be found at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture