Justice Department has opened full-scale criminal investigations into the deaths of two prisoners in U.S. custody overseas during the Bush era, Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed Thursday.
Holder also announced that he had closed most of the preliminary detainee-abuse inquiries that he authorized in 2009, which caused significant controversy for the White House at the time. But he said that he had authorized special prosecutor John Durham to dig deeper into two cases.
“Mr. Durham has advised me of the results of his investigation, and I have accepted his recommendation to conduct a full criminal investigation regarding the death in custody of two individuals. Those investigations are ongoing,” Holder said in a statement. “The Department has determined that an expanded criminal investigation of the remaining matters is not warranted.”
Holder said Durham examined allegations or indications of abuse involving 101 detainees captured in military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as others taken prisoner in the broader war on terror.
The attorney general did not identify the two cases that are still being pursued by investigators, but a source who spoke on condition of anonymity and is familiar with the investigations told POLITICO they are the cases of Gul Rahman, who apparently died of hypothermia while in Central Intelligence Agency custody in Afghanistan in 2002, and Manadel al-Jamadi, a prisoner who died in 2003 at the U.S. military-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Justice Department did not identify the two detainees at the center of the criminal investigation. But government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the first case involved the well-publicized death of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in CIA custody in 2003 at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He became publicly known as "the Iceman" after his body was photographed packed in ice and wrapped in plastic.
The second case involves the death of Gul Rahman, who died in 2002 after being shackled to a cold cement wall in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit, the officials said.
Beginning in 2002, Justice Department lawyers wrote a series of then-secret legal opinions authorizing intelligence officers to use increasingly harsh interrogation methods such as sleep deprivation, slapping and waterboarding on dozens of terrorism suspects in an effort to elicit information about al-Qaida.
Holder stressed Thursday that any intelligence officials who acted "in good faith" within the scope of the Justice Department's legal guidance at the time would not face prosecution.
The review that led to the full criminal investigations focused primarily on whether "unauthorized interrogation techniques were used by CIA interrogators" and, if so, whether they amounted to criminal violations of statutes against torture or other measures, he said.
In a nod to the tensions surrounding the issue, Holder was careful to emphasize the "incredibly important service to our nation" that intelligence officials provide.
Law-enforcement and intelligence officials declined to discuss the nearly 100 cases involving detainee treatment that were dropped. It is not clear if any involved deaths.
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