Rights groups: CIA probe doesn't go far enough

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision Monday to investigate whether interrogators from the Central Intelligence Agency or its contractors violated any federal laws in applying "enhanced interrogation techniques" to detainees in U.S. custody overseas triggered immediate criticism from human rights advocates and appeared to widen the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats. As Holder released a long-delayed 2004 report by the CIA's then-Inspector General (IG) detailing the often-brutal questioning of "high value" al Qaeda terror suspects, he named a special prosecutor to investigate whether CIA officers or its contractors went beyond the policies and practices authorised in legal memos from the George W. Bush administration. The 190-page report, though still heavily redacted, describes a litany of interrogation abuses inside the Central Intelligence Agency's overseas prisons, including repeatedly choking a prisoner, threatening to sexually assault a detainee's mother in front of him, vowing to kill a detainee's children, using a power drill during an interrogation to terrify the suspect, and staging a mock execution. The report also addresses the repeated waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-described "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks. Some CIA operatives were unclear about the legal basis for using this technique and sought guidance from their headquarters. The report says the attorney general at the time, John Ashcroft, was aware of and approved its use. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a single month.