WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is facing renewed pressure to answer for its track record on torture after the relative calm that followed the release of the Senate torture report’s damning executive summary in December.
In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch Friday, human rights group Amnesty International pressed the Justice Department to revisit its decision not to prosecute former officials from the CIA and the George W. Bush administration for their involvement in the agency’s post-9/11 torture program. The new evidence from the report prepared by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence merits another look, says Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International, in the letter.
“As the new Attorney General you have a critical responsibility to ensure the USA complies with its international human rights obligations to effectively investigate evidence of crimes under international law and to bring the suspected perpetrators to justice,” reads the letter, which is expected to arrive on Lynch’s desk Monday. “We urge you to personally examine the full SSCI report and to immediately order a 'preliminary review' into violations of federal and international laws, with a view to bringing an end to the impunity that has become the hallmark of this unlawful programme.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
DOJ said in December that it would not reopen any investigation into the now-defunct torture program, which included the use of interrogation techniques like waterboarding, rectal feeding and stress positions. The department cited its own 2009 investigation, led by federal prosecutor John Durham. In 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Durham's investigation did not find grounds to file charges.
But critics have long argued that Durham and his team did not lead a thorough inquiry, and now they say the evidence in the Senate report -- a document that even President Barack Obama has said illustrates torture, which is illegal under U.S. and international law -- is cause for another look.
Obama Administration Faces Mounting Pressure To Answer For Torture
Sadly, President Obama will continue to protect the Bush torturers. I still remember when Bush awarded the Medal of Freedom to CIA Director George Tenet. Extreme hypocrisy.
