Hearing Set in Lawsuit Against CIA Interrogation Program

Attorneys for two former military psychologists who developed the CIA's Bush-era interrogation program will ask a federal court in Washington state on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit brought by former U.S. prisoners who allege they were tortured.

The case in U.S. court in Spokane marks a step forward in efforts by rights groups to hold individuals accountable for a program that used methods its architects said stopped short of torture but that the American Civil Liberties Union said resulted in the torture of at least 119 men from 2002 until it was ended in 2008.

The ACLU, which filed the lawsuit last October on behalf of three men, one of whom died in CIA custody, argued that psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen encouraged the agency "to adopt torture as official policy" and made millions of dollars in the process.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, says Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud suffered lasting psychological and physical damage, and that Gul Rahman died from hypothermia caused by dehydration and exposure to cold.

In seeking to dismiss the suit, attorneys for the psychologists argued in court filings last month that the prisoners were asking the court to "second-guess real-time decisions by the Executive Branch in the theater of war almost 15 years ago."

The U.S. government, which was not named in the suit, has not tried to stop the case from going forward. In the past, government lawyers argued that similar cases would jeopardize national security if allowed to proceed.