News on CIA Torture

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ICRC claims CIA tortured detainees
Report deatils torture methods used
CIA admits torture

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BBC - Monday, 16 March 2009

Report claims CIA used 'torture'

The ICRC report implies the US violated international law

By Paul Reynolds - World affairs correspondent, BBC News website

CIA interrogation techniques used on al-Qaeda suspects "constituted torture", according to a leaked report by the international Red Cross.

The findings were based on testimonies by 14 so-called "high-value" detainees who were held in secret CIA prisons.

They were interviewed after being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

President George W Bush denied torture had happened and President Barack Obama has banned US agents from carrying out such practices.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has an international role in monitoring standards for prisoners and trying to ensure compliance by governments with the Geneva Conventions.

It was denied access to the prisoners until their transfer to Guantanamo Bay.

Among those interviewed by the ICRC was the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who said he was told he would be "brought to the verge of death and back".

The ICRC report was obtained by Mark Danner, a US writer, whose account is in the New York Review of Books.

The report was not intended for publication but, as is the procedure in such cases, was given in confidence to the US government.

"For the first time the words are those of the detainees themselves," Mark Danner says in a podcast attached to his story.

'Breaking point'

The report's table of contents lists the methods the prisoners told the ICRC they had endured.

Taken overall they constitute an attempt to break a prisoner down through sensory deprivation and beatings, none of which is supposed to leave physical damage that can be traced.

The accounts indicate that a combination of methods was used on each prisoner.

The methods listed included: Suffocation by water or waterboarding; prolonged stress standing; beating by use of a collar; confinement in a box; prolonged nudity; sleep deprivation and subjection to noise and cold water; and denial of solid food.

"They never used the word 'torture'... only to 'hard time'," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is quoted as saying.

"I was never threatened with death, in fact I was told that they would not allow me to die, but that I would be brought to the 'verge of death and back again'."

He said he underwent waterboarding five times: "A cloth would be placed over my face, cold water from a bottle kept in a fridge was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so I could not breathe."

He said a clip was put on his finger to monitor his pulse "so they could take me to the breaking point".

'Minimise physical damage'

Another prisoner Abu Zubaydah was apparently the first to be subjected to this "alternative set of procedures".

He said: "I was told... that I was one of the first to receive those interrogation techniques, so no rules applied."

In his case, there was a variation apparently not used subsequently.

He said he was put into a tall box and later into a smaller one in which he had to crouch, causing a wound on his leg to start bleeding.

He also had a towel tied round his neck with which his interrogators would slam him against a wall, which had plywood attached to it.

Mr Danner surmised this was to minimise the physical damage caused to him.

With other prisoners this towel became a plastic collar used with the same effect.

Contradiction?

President Bush acknowledged that, as he put it, an "alternative set of procedures" had been used on some prisoners but he denied this meant they had been tortured, which is outlawed by an international convention.

"The United States does not torture," President Bush said in September 2006. That was after the techniques described had been used.

The Bush administration developed a legal protection, under which the definition of torture was narrowed to exclude the methods described.

Mr Danner says the ICRC report now presents a "clear contradiction" of that position and that "this contradiction needs to be worked out".

Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the US's Senate Judiciary Committee, has proposed that former officials be given immunity in return for evidence.

Human rights groups want accountability.

President Obama has spoken of "looking forwards". He has also banned the use of the techniques by all US agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which had been given special dispensation by the Bush administration.

The ICRC has said that it regrets the publication of the information attributed to its report.

'Essential'

There has been a counter attack by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who once said that the use of waterboarding had been, for him, a "no-brainer".

He accused President Obama of "making choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack".

Some have questioned the value of the intelligence gained from harsh techniques.

Mr Cheney said: "I think those programmes were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States after 9/11."


'INTERROGATION METHODS'

Waterboarding
Beatings
Sleep deprivation
Prolonged stress standing
Prolonged nudity
Confinement in a box
Denial of solid food

Source: ICRC Report

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7945783.stm
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The Independent - Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Revealed: the secret report that details abuse of terror suspects

Red Cross dossier based on interviews with inmates of Guantanamo Bay

By David Usborne in New York

Interrogation techniques used by the US on al-Qa'ida suspects in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, including beatings, sleep deprivation and so-called waterboarding, "constituted torture" as well as "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment, according to a secret Red Cross report.

The report, which was not meant for public release, was written after Red Cross observers were allowed to speak to 14 "high value" detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The detainees had been transferred from secret prisons, or black sites, operated by the CIA. The testimony given to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), notably by Abu Zubaydah, who was captured after fighting US soldiers in Pakistan, provides a level of detail about the treatment the men received that has not been seen before.

Zubaydah recalls being slammed repeatedly against a plywood wall in his cell and being confined in dark, coffin-like wooden boxes. He speaks of being left unclothed and struggling to breathe as water was poured on a cloth over his face – a simulated drowning procedure known as waterboarding.

"I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress," he is quoted as saying.

The report's authors say all the men gave strikingly similar descriptions of what had happened, even if they had had little or no contact with the others. Excerpts of the report appear in an article written by Mark Danner, a professor of journalism, to be published in New York Review of Books. It is not clear how he obtained the document.

It is legally and politically significant that the ICRC wrote the report, five copies of which were given to White House and CIA officials in early 2007.

"It could not be more important that the ICRC explicitly uses the words 'torture' and 'cruel and degrading'," Mr Danner told The Washington Post. "The ICRC is the guardian of the Geneva conventions, and when it uses those words, they have the force of law."

The report's contents page lists the interrogation techniques used as: "suffocation by water; prolonged stress standing; beatings by use of a collar; beating and kicking; confinement in a box; prolonged nudity; sleep deprivation and use of loud music; exposure to cold temperature/cold water; prolonged use of handcuffs and shackles; threats; forced shaving and deprivation/restricted provision of solid food."

The report concludes: "The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA programme, either singly or in combination, constituted torture... Many other elements of the ill-treatment... constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

Five years after the 9/11 attacks, George Bush told victims' families that some prisoners had been subjected to interrogation beyond US territory using an "alternative set of methods" but that "the United States does not torture... I will not authorise it". Within hours of taking office, Barack Obama outlawed any further torture.


Torture dossier:

The detainees' stories

Abu Zabaydah
Al-Qa'ida operative captured in 2002

"I was strapped down with belts. A cloth was placed over my face and the interrogators poured water on it so I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed rotated upright. The pressure of the straps was very painful. I vomited. The bed was lowered and the same torture carried out again... I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die."

Walid Bin Attash
Yemeni national who planned the attacks on the USS Cole in 2000

"I was kept in a standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running across the width of the cell. The cell was dark with no light. The toilet consisted of a bucket in the cell... I was not allowed to clean myself after using the bucket. Loud music was playing 24 hours a day."

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Last Updated: Tuesday, 5 February 2008, 22:15 GMT

CIA admits waterboarding inmates

Michael Hayden (R) spoke as Mike McConnell reported to Congress

"We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time", Michael Hayden, CIA director

The CIA says it used waterboarding on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of "waterboarding" on terror suspects.

CIA head Michael Hayden told Congress it had only been used on three people, and not for the past five years.

He said the technique had been used on high-profile al-Qaeda detainees including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.#

Waterboarding, condemned as torture by rights groups and many governments, is an interrogation method that puts the the detainee in fear of drowning.

Mr Hayden was speaking as National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell presented his annual threat assessment.

Congress has been debating banning the use of waterboarding by the CIA.

President Bush has threatened to veto such a bill.

Kuwaiti-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of masterminding the 11 September attacks on the United States.

The two other men Mr Hayden said the CIA had also used waterboarding against are also top al-Qaeda suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, both from Saudi Arabia.

Catastrophe fears

He told Congress: "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time.

"There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaeda and its workings.

"Those two realities have changed."

In his report, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell focussed attention on al-Qaeda and its leadership based in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Al-Qaeda remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad," he said.

His report said al-Qaeda enjoyed many of the same benefits from its bases in the border areas as it had when it was in Afghanistan proper, and was able to:

use the region as a staging area for attacks outside
maintain a group of skilled operators able to direct operations around the world
pass on morale-boosting messages from Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri
improve its ability to attack the US itself.
Despite this, Mr McConnell praised the Pakistani authorities, saying they had done more to "neutralise" terrorists than any of the US's other partners - despite more than 860 members of their security forces being killed by bombs in 2007.

And although al-Qaeda had suffered some reverses, he said, it remained active and dangerous in Iraq, in North Africa, in the Arabian peninsula, Lebanon, East Africa, Pakistan and South-East Asia.

Other worries outlined by Mr McConnell included:

Russia, China and oil producers using their wealth to advance political goals
nuclear proliferation, especially Iran and North Korea
computer system vulnerabilities.
"The threats we face are global, complex and dangerous," he wrote.

"We must have the tools to enable the detection and disruption of terrorist plots and other threats."

See also:

CIA 'SECRET WAR'

KEY STORIES

UK apology over rendition flights
US 'may' use waterboarding again
CIA admits waterboarding
Inquiry into destroyed CIA tapes
CIA rejects secret jails report
CIA jails in Europe 'confirmed'
Italy CIA kidnap trial adjourned

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7229169.stm

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