C.I.A. to close secret prisons for terror detainees

The Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday that it would decommission the secret overseas prisons where it subjected Al Qaeda prisoners to brutal interrogation methods, bringing to a symbolic close the most controversial counterterrorism program of the Bush administration, The New York Times says.

In a statement to employees, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, said agency officers who worked in the program «should not be investigated, let alone punished».

Mr. Panetta and other top Obama administration officials have said they believe that waterboarding, the near-drowning method used in 2002 and 2003 on three prisoners, is torture, which is illegal under American and international law. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which interviewed 14 prisoners, said in a report made public this week that prisoners were also repeatedly slammed into walls, forced to stand for days with their arms handcuffed to the ceiling, confined in small boxes and held in frigid cells.

Mr. Panetta said the secret detention facilities were no longer in operation, but he suggested that security and maintenance had been continuing at the sites at the taxpayers’ expense.
 
In his first week in office, President Obama banned coercive interrogations and ordered the C.I.A. program closed. Mr. Panetta said that the C.I.A. had not detained any terrorism suspects since he took office in February and added that any suspects captured in the future would be quickly turned over to the American military or to a suspect’s home country.

The C.I.A. statement comes at a time of continuing debate inside the Obama administration over which classified documents related to the agency’s interrogation program should be made public. After several delays, the Justice
Department now has until April 16 to decide whether to make public legal opinions justifying the C.I.A.’s harsh methods.