WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced Thursday it has ended its investigation into CIA interrogations of terrorist detainees without bringing criminal charges.
Thursday's decision in the probes of the deaths of two terrorist suspects marks the end of a wide-ranging criminal investigation by federal prosecutor John Durham into interrogation practices during the presidency of George W. Bush.
In the past three years, Durham has looked into the treatment of 101 detainees in U.S. custody since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Durham's probe into another episode involving the CIA began in January 2008 when the Justice Department chose him to conduct a criminal investigation into the agency's destruction of videotapes it had made of its interrogations of terrorist suspects.
In August 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder expanded Durham's mandate to include a preliminary review of the CIA's interrogation of specific detainees overseas. In June 2011, Holder approved Durham's request to move into a full criminal investigation of the two deaths.
In regard to the just-completed probe of the two detainees' deaths, Holder said that "based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths, the department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt."
On Thursday, former CIA Director Michael Hayden said he was "heartened that the investigation is complete, and I'm heartened by the results. I had great confidence in Mr. Durham. I just regret that many CIA officers had to go through yet another review of these activities."
Durham's review examined whether CIA interrogators used any unauthorized interrogation techniques, and if so, whether the techniques could constitute violations of the torture statute or any other laws.
Thursday's announcement came in the deaths of Gul Rahman and Manadel al-Jamadi.
Rahman died in the early hours of Nov. 20, 2002, after being shackled to a cold concrete wall in a secret CIA prison in northern Kabul, Afghanistan, known as the Salt Pit. He was suspected of links to the terrorist group al-Qaida. Rahman is the only detainee known to have died in a CIA-run prison.
Al-Jamadi died in 2003 at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A military autopsy declared al-Jamadi's death a homicide.
Before Durham looked into Rahman's death, two other federal prosecutors conducted separate reviews and could not prove the CIA officer running the Salt Pit had intended to harm the detainee — a point made in a government document that has been released publicly.
In November 2003, CIA officers brought prisoner Manadel al-Jamadi to Abu Ghraib and, instead of turning him over to the Army, took him to a shower stall. They put a sandbag over his head, cuffed his hands behind his back and chained his arms to a barred window. When he leaned forward, his arms stretched painfully behind and above his back.
Within an hour, he was dead.
At least three CIA employees came under scrutiny, including a paramilitary officer who ran what was known as the detainee exploitation cell at Abu Ghraib.
The officer was on the raid when a group of Navy SEALs captured al-Jamadi. He processed al-Jamadi into the prison but he was not in the shower room when al-Jamadi died.
The officer failed to have a doctor supervise al-Jamadi before he was processed into the prison, violating agency procedures. The officer, who was reprimanded over the incident, now works for a defense contractor.
