John H Durham takes on CIA over al-Qaeda torture

The case against CIA agents accused of torturing terror suspects is taking shape. John H Durham, a veteran Connecticut prosecutor, has been appointed by US Attorney General Eric Holder to "examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws".

Durham, who has an astonishing record of sending criminals to jail, will look into reports that one interrogator told a 9/11 suspect said that his children would be killed if he didn't cooperate, that another threatened a prisoner that he'd have to endure seeing his mother sexually assaulted in front of him, and that the 'pressure point' method was used on some detainees, which momentarily cut off the blood supply to their brain.

It's an arduous task, but the word on Durham is that he's the right man for the job. When he was profiled by the Hartford Courant, a local paper, in a piece relating to a previous investigation, nobody could be found with anything to say against him. "There is no more principled, there is no more better living, there is no finer person that I know of or have encountered in my life," one FBI agent said.

"Despite the fact that he can be a hard-ass about certain things," said a defence lawyer, "I believe he is a real straight shooter."

Durham goes to mass, hunts ducks, shuns the limelight and tends to seek the maximum sentence wherever he can. Over a career spanning 30 years, perhaps his greatest success was his investigation into how FBI agents had been corrupted by their informants in the Boston mob, James 'Whitey' Bulger and Stephen 'The Rifleman' Flemmi. The case ended with one former agent going to jail for helping the pair to evade arrest and racketeering. Another agent, accused of helping Bulger and Flemmi to kill a Tulsa businessman, died while awaiting trial.

Durham also helped bring the Gambino family kingpin John Gotti to justice, and is credited with implementing a strategy against Connecticut's violent crack gangs which was a decade ahead of any other city's approach.

He has also earned a reputation for his attention to detail. After the body of slain New England under-boss William 'The Wild Guy' Grasso was abandoned in a thicket of poison ivy near the Connecticut River, the authorities set up a series of electronic bugs in an attempt to incriminate their suspects.

But with these mobsters savvy enough to turn up the radio volume while they whispered their secrets, agents were unable to decipher their conversations. Unsatisfied with the transcripts, Durham took the unusual step, for someone so senior, of listening to the tapes himself, and was able to come up with a statement which proved vital to his case.

Recalling this incident, a fellow prosecutor remarked, "the agents say he can hear grass grow."