Settlement reached over interrogations

A settlement in the lawsuit against two psychologists who helped devise the CIA’s brutal interrogation program was announced Thursday, bringing to an end an unusual effort to hold individuals accountable for the techniques the agency adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lawyers for the three plaintiffs in the suit, filed in 2015 in U.S. District Court in Spokane, Washington, said the former prisoners were tortured at secret CIA detention sites. The suit was against psychologists Dr. Bruce Jessen and Dr. James Mitchell.

The plaintiffs — two former detainees and the family of a third who died in custody — had sought unspecified punitive and compensatory damages. The terms of the settlement are confidential, and it was unclear whether a financial payout was involved. The parties agreed to a joint statement in which the psychologists said that they had advised the CIA and that the plaintiffs had suffered abuses, but that they were not responsible.

In a phone interview, one of the plaintiffs, Mohamed Ben Soud, said through a translator: “I feel that justice has been served. Our goal from the beginning was justice and for the people to know what happened in this black hole that was run by the CIA’s offices.”

The plaintiffs said that Jessen and Mitchell, former military psychologists, profited from their work as contractors for the CIA. The men received up to $1,800 a day and later formed a company that was paid about $81 million to help operate the interrogation program over several years.