US Officials Must Be Brought to Justice for CIA Torture Program - HRW

Human Rights Watch concluded in a report that foreign governments must prosecute senior US officials involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s torture program.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Foreign governments must prosecute senior US officials involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) torture program, given the United States has failed to bring the responsible actors to justice, Human Rights Watch concluded in a report released on Tuesday.

"It’s been a year since the Senate torture report, and still the [President Barack] Obama administration has not opened new criminal investigations into CIA torture," Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth said in a press release.

Roth concluded that "in the face of the Obama administration’s refusal to investigate and prosecute senior officials responsible for these serious crimes, other countries should proceed."

In December 2014, the US Senate published a heavily redacted executive summary exposing that the United States engaged in routine ill treatment, sexual abuse and torture of detainees. The torture practices took place in the period following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and continued through 2006.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, senior CIA officials knew the interrogation techniques constituted torture, but sought legal justification through the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel in order to justify the practice.