DOJ launches full-scale probes into two detainees’ deaths
The Justice Department has opened full-scale criminal investigations into the deaths of two prisoners in U.S. custody overseas during the Bush era, Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed Thursday.
Holder also announced that he had closed most of the preliminary detainee-abuse inquiries that he authorized in 2009, which caused significant controversy for the White House at the time. But he said that he had authorized special prosecutor John Durham to dig deeper into two cases.
“Mr. Durham has advised me of the results of his investigation, and I have accepted his recommendation to conduct a full criminal investigation regarding the death in custody of two individuals. Those investigations are ongoing,” Holder said in a statement. “The Department has determined that an expanded criminal investigation of the remaining matters is not warranted.”
Holder said Durham examined allegations or indications of abuse involving 101 detainees captured in military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as others taken prisoner in the broader war on terror.
The attorney general did not identify the two cases that are still being pursued by investigators, but a source who spoke on condition of anonymity and is familiar with the investigations told POLITICO they are the cases of Gul Rahman, who apparently died of hypothermia while in Central Intelligence Agency custody in Afghanistan in 2002, and Manadel al-Jamadi, a prisoner who died in 2003 at the U.S. military-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.