New Yrok Times podał, że w dniu dzisiejszym Departament Sprawiedliwości USA poinformował, że prokurator federalny nie wniesie do sądu zarzutów przeciwko funkcjonariuszom CIA w związku ze zniszczeniem nagrań video z zapisem przebiegu przesłuchań prowadzonych przy użyciu brutalnych metod wobec osób podejrzewanych o współpracę z organizacjami terrorystycznymi.

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No Charges in Destruction of C.I.A. Interrogation Tapes

By MARK MAZZETTI and CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: November 9, 2010

WASHINGTON — A federal prosecutor will not bring criminal charges against any of the Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in destroying videotapes depicting the brutal interrogation of Al Qaeda detainees, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.

After an investigation spanning nearly three years, John H. Durham, the special prosecutor assigned to the case by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, has decided not to charge the C.I.A. undercover officers and top lawyers at the agency for their roles in the destruction of the tapes.

Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said that since that appointment, “a team of prosecutors and F.B.I. agents led by Mr. Durham has conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter.” He continued, “As a result of that investigation, Mr. Durham has concluded that he will not pursue criminal charges for the destruction of the interrogation videotapes.”

Jose A. Rodriguez, the former head of the agency’s clandestine service, ordered his staff in November 2005 to destroy tapes of the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The tapes had been kept in a safe in the agency’s station in Thailand, the country where the interrogations were conducted in 2002.

Mr. Rodriguez took responsibility for the destruction of the tapes, according to current and former government officials, and said that C.I.A. lawyers had authorized his order. The agency withheld the fact that the tapes existed from , federal courts and the Sept. 11 Commission, which had asked the agency for records of the interrogations.

The destruction of the interrogation tapes was first reported by The New York Times in December 2007.

The announcement that there will be no charges in the destruction of the tapes leaves unanswered whether Mr. Durham will bring other charges related to the death or mistreatment of detainees in the hands of the agency, or to any false statements made by officials to investigators about harsh interrogations. The anti-torture act has an eight-year statute of limitations, and there is no time limit for murder charges.

Documents released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union showed that the C.I.A. destroyed the tapes on the morning of Nov. 9, 2005. The five-year statute of limitations for filing charges of obstruction of justice related to their destruction expired on Tuesday.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned Mr. Durham’s failure to file charges. He noted that at the time the tapes were destroyed, they were pertinent to several pending legal cases, including a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U. in 2004.

“It strains credulity that the conscious destruction of tapes depicting torture would not be a crime,” Mr. Romero said. “How the destruction of evidence in the middle of many pieces of litigation directly on point to what was captured on the videos is not seen as obstruction of justice is hard to imagine. The destruction of the tapes, and Durham’s conclusion, raise serious doubts about whether the government has the political will to police itself.”

But Robert S. Bennett, Mr. Rodriguez’s attorney, said in an interview that he was pleased that the Justice Department “did the right thing.”
Mr. Rodriguez is “a hero and a patriot, who simply wanted to protect his people and his country,” Mr. Bennett said.

Mr. Durham, a career federal prosecutor based in Connecticut, was initially appointed in January 2008 by Mr. Mukasey to investigate whether the destruction of the tapes was a crime. In August 2009, the new attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., expanded Mr. Durham’s mandate to include looking into whether crimes were committed in the interrogation program, an investigation that remains open.

At the time, Mr. Holder cited a 2004 report by the C.I.A. inspector general that discussed several instances of detainees who died during interrogations by agency officials in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the use of techniques that had not been found to be legal by the Justice Department, like mock executions and threats to family members. Mr. Holder stressed at the time that the Justice Department would “not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees.”

The role of once-secret memorandums about interrogation techniques by politically appointed lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has been controversial. The documents, which leaked in 2004 when the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was in the headlines, asserted that the president, as commander in chief, has the constitutional power to override anti-torture statutes. The memos also claimed that certain techniques — like stripping prisoners naked, keeping them awake for long periods, slamming them into walls, and subjecting them to the drowning technique called waterboarding — did not amount to torture.

Many legal scholars have contended that the memorandums gave a false reading of the law. The Justice Department later rescinded the memorandums. But because the Justice Department had initially signed off on the techniques, it is considered essentially impossible for the Justice Department to prosecute officials who relied on the memorandums.

In his newly released memoir, former President George W. Bush writes that he personally authorized the C.I.A. to use the techniques after obtaining approval from his lawyers that the interrogation program would be lawful.

“I have been troubled by the blowback against the intelligence community and Justice Department for their role in the surveillance and interrogation programs,” Mr. Bush wrote. “Our intelligence officers carried out their orders with skill and courage, and they deserve our gratitude for protecting our nation. Legal officials in my administration did their best to resolve complex issues in a time of extraordinary danger to our country. Their successors are entitled to disagree with their conclusions. But criminalizing differences of legal opinion would set a terrible precedent for our democracy.”

While several former agency officials have testified before a grand jury, until Tuesday there was no public indication of any concrete progress for Mr. Durham’s investigation. For years, the Justice Department routinely referred questions about the inquiry to Mr. Durham’s office, where a spokesman in turn routinely declined to comment about it. Mr. Durham’s spokesman did not immediately return a call on Tuesday.

Mr. Romero said that the lengthy time Mr. Durham is taking to conduct his investigation is running out the clock on the possibility of charging anyone for abusing detainees in the early years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when most of the aggressive tactics were employed.

“As each day goes by, crimes that were committed years ago are no longer under the jurisdiction of the courts,” Mr. Romero said.

Źródło: NY Times