CIA torture case

In a legal first, US officials have been held accountable for torture during war. In a case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of two former detainees, two senior psychologists contracted by the CIA to torture detainees settled with the plaintiffs before the formal trial was due to start. Criticism of the CIA-led torture programme increased after the 2014 release of a congressional report on CIA interrogation techniques. The two detainees on whose behalf the case had been filed were amongst three who were held and tortured at a secret CIA facility – ‘black site’ – in Afghanistan that prisoners called ‘The Darkness’. One of the detainees had died from hypothermia suffered during the torture process. While the ACLU has claimed this to be a legal victory, there is room for caution since the trial process did not go ahead. This means that a legal precedent has yet to have been established which could allow foreign citizens to prosecute US citizens for war crimes committed in another country. However, the decision to settle is an admission that the legal grounds for charging the contractors were strong. Interestingly – and disappointingly – the CIA itself was not a defendant in the case. How can the contracting agency not be responsible for the actions of its employees?

The congressional report on CIA interrogations confirms that torture was a strategy that had been sanctioned at the very top of the organisational command structure. It seems, though, that the way forward will be to place liability on the individuals who were contracted to torture detainees, not the contractor itself. This is in keeping with the way the global war on terror has been conducted, and is a legal space that we will need to watch. The only real victory will be achieved when the CIA itself is condemned in the courts and made to bear responsibility for using torture as an interrogation technique. This will also make it more difficult for President Trump to sanction water-boarding as a legitimate strategy – something he has been reportedly contemplating. This was an important case since the two psychologists are thought to have been the first to introduce these torture techniques before they were standardised across the secret detention centres. Perhaps, a settlement was not enough, considering there are many more potential victims of such torture techniques. There are those who want greater accountability and transparency and hopefully this case is the first step towards further litigation against the use of torture in war.