'No immunity' in any CIA abuse cases

GENEVA: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Tuesday there should be no immunity from prosecution for torture of terror suspects in a US probe of alleged CIA prisoner abuse cases.

The next step would involve criminal liability for anyone who broke the law, Navi Pillay said in a statement calling for greater transparency about "secret places of detention and what went on in them".

"I hope there is a swift examination of the various allegations of abuse made by former and current detainees in Guantanamo and other US-run prisoners and if they are verified, that the next steps will involve accountability for anyone who has violated the law," she said.

On Monday, US Attorney General Eric Holder named a special prosecutor to probe CIA prisoner abuse cases.

The move came after the Justice Department's ethics watchdog recommended considering prosecution of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employees or contractors for harsh interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan that went beyond approved limits.

Pillay, a former UN war crimes judge, said that the use of secret places of detention must be curbed and she called for the release of the names of detainees currently being held there.

"Secrecy has been a major part of the problem with this type of detention regime," she said. "When guards and interrogators think they are safe from outside territory, and legal safeguards are circumvented, laws become all too easy to ignore."

Pillay reiterated her support for US President Barack Obama's commitment to close the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by 2010.

John Milligan-Whyte, chairman of the Center for America-China Partnership, said what has been revealed about alleged CIA abuse of prisoners was "horrendous".

He said there is a danger that the CIA's intelligence-gathering capabilities will be damaged and its morale hurt as a result.

Obama is struggling to deal with the challenges left behind as a result of the former vice-president Dick Cheney philosophy - that America must never apologize for anything it has done and that it must take any action necessary to protect America, he said.

Zhou Qi, director of the American politics' section of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the report will have a very negative impact on the image of the United States.

It is imperative that the US makes policy adjustments, he said.

In Washington, conservatives and liberals alike reacted critically, though for different reasons, to Holder's decision to appoint a federal prosecutor to investigate possible abuses by CIA interrogators.

Wrong targets?

Conservatives, led by former vice-president Dick Cheney, said the investigation wrongly targeted those who helped keep the nation safe after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks against the United States and would diminish the ability of the government to safeguard Americans.

Civil liberties groups were unhappy that officials from the administration of George W. Bush were not targeted by investigators.

Holder appointed federal prosecutor John Durham on Monday to look into abuse allegations after the release of an internal CIA inspector general's report that revealed agency interrogators used tactics that included a threat to kill a Sept 11 suspect's children and a suggestion that another would be forced to watch his mother be sexually assaulted.

Obama has said interrogators would not face charges if they had followed legal guidelines. The report said, however, that some CIA interrogators went beyond Bush administration restrictions that gave them wide latitude to use severe tactics such as waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique. Three high-level suspects underwent waterboarding scores of times.

Obama's caveat has not satisfied Cheney, who claimed this year that the Obama administration is making the nation less secure by dismantling Bush-era initiatives aimed at disrupting terrorists' plans.

Cheney contended that the inspector general's report showed that the severe techniques resulted in "the bulk of intelligence we gained about Al-Qaida" and "saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks".

Although the report somewhat buttressed Cheney's contention by saying the interrogations obtained some information that identified terrorists and plots, the inspector general also raised broad concerns about the legality and effectiveness of the tactics, saying that measuring their success is "a more subjective process and not without some concern".

Cheney and others have warned that opening investigations into incidents outlined by the CIA report will destroy morale at the agency and discourage its staff from aggressive intelligence work on terror cases.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the announcement of a special prosecutor a "poor and misguided decision", noting that the cases of abuse already have been reviewed and passed on by federal prosecutors.

Several prominent Democrats and officials with Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said on Tuesday that the potential prosecutions are a start, but the probe does nothing to investigate the actions of officials who sanctioned the brutal interrogation program.

"Any investigation at this point is welcome," Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's national security project, said. "But any investigation that begins and ends with the so-called rogue interrogators would be completely inadequate given the evidence that's already in the public domain. We know that senior officials authorized torture and we know that DOJ lawyers facilitated torture."

Amnesty International-USA was similarly unimpressed. Tom Parker, its director of terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights, likened limiting the prosecutions to interrogators to "going after the drug mule and leaving the drug kingpin alone."

AP, Reuters and China Daily

(China Daily 08/27/2009 page11)