Human Rights Watch Demands Prosecution Of Bush Officials For Torture

Even since the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last December detailed the CIA torture program established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, no one has been held accountable. Human Rights Watch is renewing its calls to change that.

The group is calling on the Obama administration, in its waning days, to reinvestigate and prosecute individuals known to have carried out some of the enhanced interrogation techniques detailed in the Senate’s report which ran the gamut from sleep deprivation to waterboarding to unnecessary rectal feedings.

“The US government has not adequately accounted for these abuses. It has an obligation under international law to prosecute torture where warranted and provide redress to victims, but it has done neither,” Human Rights Watch wrote in their report. “No one with real responsibility for these crimes has been held accountable.”

As Human Rights Watch notes, the Obama administration did carry out an investigation that ended in 2012, but the group says that “the apparent failure of the investigation to question current or former detainees undercuts any claims that it was thorough or credible.”

Human Rights Watch is calling on the Obama administration to specifically investigate the following individuals.

Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo

Assistant Attorney General for Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee

Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo.

CIA Director George Tenet

National Security Legal Advisor John Bellinger

Attorney General John Ashcroft

White House Counsel Legal Advisor Alberto Gonzales

Counsel to the Vice President David Addington

Deputy White House Counsel Timothy Flanagan

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice

Defense Department General Counsel William Haynes II

Vice President Dick Cheney

President George W. Bush