JURIST - Paper Chase: FBI agents witnessed 'borderline torture' of detainees: DOJ report

[JURIST] US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) [official website] agents were present during interrogations of terrorism suspects in which Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [official website] or Department of Defense (DOD) [official website] officers used "borderline torture" interrogation tactics, but they did not participate in those interrogations, according to a report [PDF text; AP excerpts] released Tuesday by the US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General [official website]. The report also found that most FBI agents who had witnessed suspected abuses had reported them to their supervisors, and that the Bureau had expressed concerns [JURIST report] regarding the tactics to the DOD, but that the reservations had little impact on DOD policy. The report concluded that the FBI had not given agents enough initial guidance on what to do if witnessing potential abuses, and that both it and the DOJ could have "pressed harder" to resolve their concerns.

The 370-page report was commissioned subsequent to an internal FBI investigation into what role its agents may have played in the potentially abusive interrogations of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq [JURIST news archives] from 2001 to 2004. AP has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

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