TIMES ONLINE: The Obama Administration will launch criminal investigations into brutal Bush-era terror interrogations after a report tonight revealed that operatives threatened to kill the children of a key September 11 suspect, and told another his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him.
The report, which also said detainees suffered mock executions and death threats, convinced Eric Holder, President Obama’s Attorney-General, to appoint veteran federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate CIA abuse of terror suspects.
The 2004 report, which has been suppressed for five years but was released after a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), lays out in grim detail the abuse of terror suspects between 2002 and 2004 at secret CIA “black site” prisons.
Its contents, and the decision by Mr Holder to explore prosecutions, will reignite the partisan debate on Capitol Hill over the issue of torture. Mr Obama has repeatedly said that he wants to look forward, rather than get bogged down in investigations of Bush-era abuses – a sentiment repeated by his spokesman yesterday. >>> Tim Reid in Washington | Monday, August 24, 2009
