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How the CIA tortures some prisoners

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has declined comment on an ABC News report listing cruel and inhuman interrogation techniques used to extract confessions from Muslim prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe

One former detainee told ABC, “They would not let you rest, day or night. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Don’t sleep. Don’t lie on the floor.” The detainees were also forced to listen to rap artist Eminem’s music that was so foreign to their ears that it made them frantic.

The CIA sources described a list of six “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top Al Qaeda men incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorised to use the techniques:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him. 2. The Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear. 3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage. 4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions. 5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. 6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

ABC News, quoting sources, said CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said Al Qaeda’s toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess. “The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law,” according to John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

Two experienced officers have told ABC that there is little to be gained by these techniques that could not be more effectively gained by a methodical, careful, psychologically based interrogation. According to a classified report prepared by the CIA Inspector General John Helgerwon and issued in 2004, the techniques “appeared to constitute cruel, and degrading treatment under the (Geneva) convention”.

It is “bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture’s bad enough,” said former CIA officer Bob Baer. ABC News was told that at least three CIA officers declined to be trained in the techniques before a cadre of 14 were selected to use them on a dozen top Al Qaeda suspects in order to obtain critical information. In at least one instance, ABC News was told that the techniques led to questionable information aimed at pleasing the interrogators and that this information had a significant impact on US actions in Iraq. “Enhanced interrogations” have been authorised for about a dozen high value Al Qaeda targets, Khalid Sheik Mohammed among them. According to the sources, all of these have confessed, none of them has died, and all of them remain in prison.

According to the sources, when an interrogator wishes to use a particular technique on a prisoner, the policy at the CIA is that each step of the interrogation process must be signed off at the highest level - by the CIA deputy director for operations. A cable must be sent and a reply received each time a progressively harsher technique is used. The described oversight appears tough but critics say it could be tougher. In reality, sources said, there are few known instances when an approval has not been granted. Still, even the toughest critics of the techniques say they are relatively well monitored and limited in use.

Meanwhile, in an interview published by USA Today on Monday, CIA chief Porter Goss said, “This agency does not do torture. Torture does not work. We use lawful capabilities to collect vital information and we do it in a variety of unique and innovative ways, all of which are legal and none of which are torture.” The Senate has passed a bill banning the torture of suspected terrorists in US custody. The bill would restrict techniques used to interrogate foreign terrorism suspects and ban “cruel, inhumane or degrading” treatment of anyone in US custody.

Without elaborating, Goss suggested that some techniques that would be restricted under the Senate bill have yielded valuable intelligence. He stressed that it was important that the United States have flexibility in dealing with terror suspects in other countries. “An enemy that’s working in an amorphous network that doesn’t have to worry about a bunch of regulations, chain of command, rule of law or anything else has got a huge advantage over a stultified, slow-moving bureaucratic, by-the-book” organisation. “So we have to, within the law and within all the requirements of our professional ethics in this profession, develop agility. And that means putting a lot of judgment in the hands of individuals overseas,” he added.

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