Ethiopian Review

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended that Attorney General Eric Holder reopen and pursue a host of CIA prisoner-abuse cases, a government official said Monday.

The move would reverse the policy of the Bush administration, which had closed the cases, and could expose CIA employees and agency contractors to criminal prosecution for the alleged mistreatment of terror suspects in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility was recently presented to Holder, the official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on grounds of anonymity because the internal legal discussions are still ongoing. The ethics recommendation comes as the Justice Department is to disclose a 2004 report by the CIA’s inspector general detailing prisoner-abuse allegations.

In another development, President Barack Obama has signed off on setting up a special terrorism-era interrogation team that would be placed at the FBI but report directly to the White House-based National Security Council, The Washington Post reported in Monday’s editions.

According to the Post, the special new unit would be named the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group and would be comprised of experts in this field from the law enforcement and intelligence community. Obama was said to have approved creation of the unit late last week.

The Associated Press reported July 18 that such an endeavor was in the works. A government official said at the time that a special presidential task force on interrogation methods concluded the unit should be created, but was uncertain which agencies would have a role.

The unit’s structure would depart significantly from such work under the Bush administration, when the CIA had the lead and sometimes exclusive role in questioning al-Qaida suspects. The task force had not at that juncture in early summer reached a conclusion as to which agency should lead the unit or where it should be based, the official said.

The official, who spoke on grounds of anonymity because a final decision was still pending, said such a unit would not alter the administration’s decision banning harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, that were authorized by the Bush administration, saying the task force was examining what other techniques could be used.

For his part, Holder is considering whether to appoint a special criminal prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s interrogation practices, a controversial move that would run counter to President Barack Obama’s wishes to leave the issue in the past.

But Holder reportedly reacted with disgust when he first read accounts of prisoner abuse earlier this year in a classified version of the IG report.

The New York Times, which first reported the story, said there were a dozen such prisoner-abuse cases subject to be reopened. The official who spoke with The AP gave no specific number.

The Justice report is said to reveal how interrogators conducted mock executions and threatened at least one man with a gun and a power drill. Threatening a prisoner with death violates U.S. anti-torture laws.

A federal judge has ordered the IG report made public Monday, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

A CIA spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, told the Times that the recommendation to reopen the cases had not been sent to the agency.

- The Associated Press