Is the CIA Allowed to Kill Prisoners?
Jane Mayer has an excellent article in the New Yorker, A Deadly Interrogation: Can the C.I.A. legally kill a prisoner?
Meet Mark Swanner:
Mark Swanner, a forty-six-year-old C.I.A. officer who has performed interrogations and polygraph tests for the agency, which has employed him at least since the nineteen-nineties. (He is not a covert operative.) Two years ago, at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, an Iraqi prisoner in Swanner’s custody, Manadel al-Jamadi, died during an interrogation. His head had been covered with a plastic bag, and he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe; according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he asphyxiated. In a subsequent internal investigation, United States government authorities classified Jamadi’s death as a “homicide,” meaning that it resulted from unnatural causes. Swanner has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency.
The harsh treatment of Jamadi and other prisoners in C.I.A. custody, however, has inspired an emotional debate in Washington, raising questions about what limits should be placed on agency officials who interrogate foreign terrorist suspects outside U.S. territory.
Mayer's article continues with a discussion of the proposed anti-torture amendment and the resistence of the Adminsitration to include CIA officials. There are some excellent quotes from Sen. Dick Durbin.
[Via War and Piece.]
Our prior coverage of Jamadi's death can be found here.
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