We must prosecute CIA interrogators
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PRESIDENT OBAMA'S decision not to prosecute CIA interrogators who were acting pursuant to legal policy drafted by the Department of Justice creates an unacceptable irony ("Newly released Bush documents detail torture tactics: Obama: CIA officers won't be prosecuted," Page A2, April 17). After World War II, the United States helped craft one of the Nuremberg principles to read: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him." Since then, countries and courts around the world have repeatedly rejected the so-called superior orders defense, refusing to accept legality and chain of command as a justification for human rights violations.
At the same time that our government is seeking to deport John Demjanjuk to stand trial in Germany on charges of having been a Nazi guard, it is protecting CIA interrogators who subjected people under their control to unspeakable torture. We must investigate and prosecute everyone involved in abusing detainees, from those who wrote the legal memos to those who followed them. Not to do so is to ignore, and possibly undo, a fundamental principle of the modern-day justice we helped to create.
Laura Rótolo
Staff attorney
ACLU of Massachusetts
Boston
