WASHINGTON — A federal prosecutor has expanded his inquiry into harsh CIA interrogation practices during the Bush administration and is conducting a full criminal investigation into the deaths of two detainees, U.S. officials said Thursday.
At the same time, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham has concluded that no charges will be filed in the interrogations of 99 other detainees who were in U.S. custody after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Attorney General Eric Holder said.
At Holder’s request, Durham has been examining the actions of CIA interrogators and contractors at “black site” prisons for nearly two years.
Although officials would not identify the two detainees, sources said a Durham-led federal grand jury in Alexandria has been looking into the death of Manadel al-Jamadi, a suspected bombmaker who died in November 2003 in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison while in CIA custody. He had been beaten by Navy SEALs. One SEAL was charged in connection with his death but was acquitted.
Sources have said Durham is also closely examining the death of Gul Rahman, a young Afghan man who was beaten and chained to a concrete floor without blankets at a secret CIA facility north of Kabul. He died in November 2002 at a place known as the Salt Pit. A team of career federal prosecutors earlier declined to file charges in both cases, but Durham is looking at them anew.
