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The memos authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding, keep detainees naked, hold them in painful standing positions and keep them in the cold for long periods of time. Other techniques included depriving them of solid food and slapping them. Sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling and threats to a detainee's family were also used. "There was at that time considerable debate, both in and out of government, over the definition of torture as applied to specific interrogation techniques," Judge Raymond Fisher wrote for the appeals panel. "In light of that debate...we cannot say that any reasonable official in 2001-03 would have known that the specific interrogation techniques allegedly employed against Padilla, however appalling, necessarily amounted to torture." The appeals panel also said the trial court erred when it concluded that Padilla and other suspected terrorists held by the military enjoyed the same rights as ordinary prison inmates. Fisher was joined by Judges N. Randy Smith and Rebecca R. Pallmeyer. Fisher and Pallmeyer were appointed by President Bill Clinton. Bush appointed Smith. Padilla's attorney Jonathan Freiman said he's deciding whether to pursue further appeals, which could include asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. "Incommunicado detention, brutal treatment and death threats do not represent American values and are universally condemned," Freiman said. "Hopefully no one else will face the horror that Mr. Padilla and his family have faced. The law should guarantee that, and the Ninth Circuit erred in concluding that Mr. Yoo's actions were not
'beyond debate.'" An initial review by the Justice Department's internal affairs unit found that Yoo and Jay Bybee
-- another high-ranking official in Bush's Department of Justice -- had committed professional misconduct, a conclusion that could have cost them their law licenses. But, underscoring just how controversial and legally thorny the memos have become, the Justice Department's top career lawyer reviewed the matter and disagreed. "This decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda," Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis wrote in a memo released in February 2010. Bybee is now a judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. He was not involved in the court's decision Wednesday.
[Associated
Press;
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