The Department of Justice should be asked to decide whether a former police officer serving a five-year prison sentence in the Abner Louima torture case can qualify for early release, a federal judge said yesterday.

“I’m going to ask you to take this up with Washington,” appeals court Judge Reena Raggi told lawyers at a hearing in Brooklyn. Lawyers for the prisoner, Charles Schwarz, had argued in court papers that their client is owed early release under a sentencing deal struck with prosecutors in 2002.

The 39-year-old former officer was convicted of lying to authorities about the Louima case, but he avoided conviction on charges of violating Mr. Louima’s civil rights. Prosecutors say that following Mr. Louima’s arrest in a nightclub brawl in 1997, Schwarz held the Haitian immigrant down while another officer sodomized him with a broken broomstick; Schwarz maintains he wasn’t there.

Prosecutors had agreed in 2002 to seek a 13-month reduction in Schwarz’s sentence if he and his attorneys refrained from discussing the case.

In March, prosecutors contacted the Bureau of Prisons and recommended reducing Schwarz’s sentence to 47 months from 60 months, but prison officials refused, saying the law allowed them to grant early freedom only to prisoners who were terminally ill.