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CHICAGO (AP) ― Release of a four-year, multimillion-dollar report on allegations that Chicago homicide detectives tortured suspects was delayed Friday pending Illinois Supreme Court action on an appeal filed by a former prosecutor.

"We have to hold off, if Your Honor please, until we determine the timing in the Illinois Supreme Court," said attorney Robert Boyle, one of two special prosecutors who wrote the report.

Cook County Chief Criminal Court Judge Paul Biebel delayed the release at least two weeks.

The report focuses on allegations that 192 black men were tortured in Chicago police interrogation rooms in the 1970s and 1980s.

No criminal charges have been filed, but the scandal has drawn attention from human rights groups nationwide and numerous civil lawsuits filed by alleged victims.

Boyle told Biebel on Friday that the Illinois Supreme Court is considering an appeal seeking to block release of information concerning the former prosecutor.

The former prosecutor was known in court papers only as John Doe, attorneys said.

"The forces opposing disclosure have filed documents in the Supreme Court of Illinois asking it to hold up disclosure," attorney Locke Bowman of the MacArthur Justice Center told reporters. But he said it was only a matter of time until the report is released.

"I believe it will come out sooner rather than later," Bowman said.

While the name of the former prosecutor who filed the appeal with the Supreme Court was kept under seal, attorney Flint Taylor of the Peoples Law Office, which has battled the police in court for decades, told reporters he believed he knew the attorney's name.

He said the attorney volunteered in a conversation with him that he had taken the Fifth Amendment before a grand jury when asked about the alleged police torture of 1982 murder suspect Andrew Wilson.

That former prosecutor and his attorney did not immediately respond to messages left at their offices seeking comment.

Taylor said it was possible the former prosecutor didn't want to answer questions to protect his boss at the time, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was then Cook County state's attorney. He said the man might have spoken with Daley about the Wilson case when it was fresh.

Taylor released a February 1982 letter from Dr. John M. Raba, medical director of Cermak (prison) health services, to then-police Superintendent Richard J. Brzeczek, saying that Wilson had been brought in two nights earlier with bruises, swelling and abrasions on his head as well as a battered right eye and burns on his thigh.

Taylor released a second letter dated eight days later from Brzeczek to Daley, saying he had opened an internal investigation but seeking instructions on what else he should do.

Police Lt. Jon Burge, former commander of the the Pullman (now Calumet) violent crimes unit, was fired after a police board found that Wilson was abused while in his custody. Burge now lives in Florida. His lawyer says he never tortured anyone. Wilson is serving life for murdering two police officers.

Biebel appointed the special prosecutors in 2002 to investigate claims of torture by Pullman Area officers. Allegations include officers using suffocation techniques, such as placing a typewriter cover over a suspect's head, along with electric shocks, beatings and mock Russian roulette to elicit confessions.

(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)