Judge Refuses to Sanction CIA for Destroying Torture Tapes
Wired News (blog)
October 6, 2011
By David Kravets
A federal judge won’t hold the CIA in contempt for destroying videotapes of detainee interrogations that included the use of a torture technique known as waterboarding, ruling instead Wednesday that the spy agency merely committed “transgressions” for its failure to abide by his court order.
Punishing the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of New York ruled, “would serve no beneficial purpose.” …
Alexander Abdo, an ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] staff attorney, blasted Hellerstein’s ruling.
… “The truth is that the CIA destroyed evidence of torture, and the destruction of this evidence has made it harder to hold high-level officials accountable for the abuse that they authorized.”
The CIA in 2007 admitted to destroying the tapes of interrogations of alleged al-Qaeda members Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. A special prosecutor last year found that CIA officials should not be charged for the tapes’ destruction. …
Read in full: www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/cia-dodges-contempt/
