CIA officials linked to brutal interrogation tactics in a U.S. Senate report on torture may be prosecuted or sued overseas for their conduct, a threat that may keep them confined to the U.S. for the rest of their lives.

“The reality is that none of the individuals involved, particularly those whose names are known, should ever travel outside the United States again,” said Beth Van Schaack, who teaches international criminal justice and human rights at Stanford University. She noted the potential for suits in foreign courts under “expansive principles of jurisdiction.”

One cautionary tale: An Italian court in November 2009 convicted 23 Americans, mostly suspected Central Intelligence Agency officials, in absentia for abducting radical Islamic cleric Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr on a Milan street in February 2003. Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, said he was kidnapped by CIA agents and turned over to Egyptian security officials and tortured.

None of the accused CIA officials appeared for the trial. The CIA station chief in Italy lost his retirement home when the absentia case concluded and the house was forcibly sold to help pay a damages award of 1 million euros ($1.5 million) to Nasr and 500,000 euros to the cleric’s wife.

CIA officials linked to the torture details released Dec. 9 in the Senate report may fare worse if countries exposed in the agency’s extraordinary rendition program are pressured to bring criminal cases. About 21 European countries cooperated in the U.S. practice of transferring terror suspects to a foreign country for detention and questioning without legal proceedings in American courts.

Pandora’s Box

“As a result of the additional disclosures that are now public, there is going to be more pressure for prosecutions and accountability abroad in part because U.S. courts have failed to provide any accountability at home,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project. “Pandora’s box was opened when the CIA made the decision to torture. The movement and need for accountability is ongoing.”

The Senate report, a summary of a still-classified 6,000- page investigation, focuses on the agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It revealed that U.S.-held terrorism suspects received more brutal treatment than previously known. Senate investigators found suspects were held for days at a time in the dark, handcuffed by the wrists to an overhead bar and subjected to numerous sessions of waterboarding, some of which evolved from simulated drowning to near drownings.

‘No Stomach’

In the past, there was “no stomach” in the U.S. for prosecutions over the treatment of detainees and that may not have changed, said Robert K. Goldman, an American University law professor and expert on human rights law.

“I think criminal prosecution is out of the question” in the U.S., Goldman said. “The fact that we don’t prosecute does not preclude other countries from exercising jurisdiction under certain circumstances.”

While no country has so far targeted U.S. counterterror practices, torture victims have filed at least six cases, two of which have been decided in the European Court on Human Rights, an international court based in Strasbourg, France. In December 2012 in the court’s first case involving secret detention sites, it ruled a German national’s account of torture at facilities in the Macedonian capital of Skopje and in Afghanistan was established beyond a reasonable doubt.

The court found Macedonia violated the European Convention on Human Rights by torturing Khaled el-Masri, denying his rights to freedom and privacy and refusing to adequately investigate his claims.

‘Black Sites’

That ruling was followed by another in July finding Poland at fault for the torture of terror suspects Abd al-Rahim al- Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, who said they were held at a CIA “black site” in the country. Al-Nashiri was suspected in the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.

Al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah have also asserted human rights claims against Romania and Lithuania, respectively. The men claim Polish officials knowingly and intentionally enabled the CIA to hold them in secret detention for six and nine months, respectively, without any legal basis. The cases cite similar degrading treatment at CIA sites in Romania and Lithuania.

In the U.S., virtually all of the lawsuits brought by torture victims have been dismissed on grounds of secrecy or immunity, leaving little recourse for plaintiffs, Shamsi said.

Domestic Liability

There isn’t “any realistic domestic liability” against agents and officials involved in interrogations, David B. Rivkin Jr., a partner at the law firm BakerHostetler, said, noting the government could assert a number of immunities and defenses. The real threat is prosecution overseas for possible human rights offenses, Rivkin said.

Countries with long-arm statutes, including many in Europe, are capable of indicting people for offenses not committed in their territory. Spain, Belgium and Italy, and to a lesser extent the U.K. and France, have a history of such actions, Rivkin said.

The report has “put a bullseye on the people involved,” he said. “It’s almost inviting foreign governments and prosecutors to do something.”

In the case of el-Masri, his claims against the CIA were blocked in Germany and the U.S., where his case was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2007. The human-rights court heard his case in May 2012, awarding damages of 60,000 euros ($78,000) later that year.

Senate Finding

The Senate report revealed that while the Justice Department told Congress that el-Masri’s case was properly dismissed on secrecy grounds, the CIA later informed legislators it had no basis for detaining him.

El-Masri, a German of Lebanese descent, was arrested in Macedonia in December 2003 after he was mistaken for a terrorist with a similar name and handed over to U.S. agents about three weeks later, according to the Senate report. He was stripped and beaten and then drugged and flown to Afghanistan where he was held in a CIA-run facility north of Kabul for four months. Macedonia agreed to pay the damages award following the human- rights ruling.

“Anybody, anywhere, who was involved in ordering, sanctioning or carrying out these gruesome practices must face criminal prosecution,” said Isabella Sankey, policy director for Liberty, a London-based advocacy group. “Until the U.K. government establishes a judicial inquiry into the assistance given by our agencies, cover-up and official impunity will continue.”

Sept. 11 Suspects

Suspects accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington are seeking to use the Senate’s report as part of their defense. If convicted by a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the five face the death penalty for using aircraft to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Defense lawyers haven’t been provided access to CIA records and disclosure of the information in the Senate report will strengthen their arguments for obtaining the full report and underlying documents and interviews with agency personnel, Shamsi said.

In April, lawyers for Ammar al Baluchi, the nephew of accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, filed a request with the judge overseeing the case for access to the full, non-redacted report.

Excluding Statements

Evidence of torture may serve as a basis to exclude from a trial statements made by a defendant even years afterward, said James Connell, one of the lawyers for al Baluchi, who allegedly helped finance the attacks. A finding of illegal pretrial punishment also may win a defendant leniency at sentencing, he said.

Zubaydah, described as a top al Qaeda operative, is mentioned more than 1,000 times in the Senate report. His interrogation, and that of another detainee, was the subject of videotapes that were destroyed by the CIA in 2005. The use of 10 specific interrogation techniques against Zubaydah was approved by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in August 2002 and relied on “inaccurate CIA representations” about his status in al Qaeda, according to the the report.

Zubaydah said in 2007 during a military tribunal hearing in Guantanamo, where he is still being held, that he almost died in U.S. custody, according to transcripts released in 2009 in response to a lawsuit by the ACLU. Zubaydah, in a statement read by a representative at the hearing, said he almost lost his “mind and life” during months of physical and mental torture and suffering.

“They did not care about my injuries that they inflicted to my eye, to my stomach, to my bladder, and my left thigh and my reproductive organs,” Zubaydah was quoted as saying. “They didn’t care that I almost died from these injuries.”

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