Declassified : Chilling methods used in CIA torture sessions

Techniques were ‘far more brutal’ than the agency had previously admitted to

WASHINGTON: Sleep deprivation for over a week, beatings, shackling, and waterboarding – a litany of the cruel methods used by the Bush-era CIA to interrogate al Qaeda terror suspects was exposed on Tuesday.

The shocking report released by the US Senate found that the techniques employed by the CIA were ‘far more brutal’ than the spy agency had previously admitted to.

It was drawn up over several years by the Senate intelligence committee, which revealed such techniques were applied with “significant repetition for days or weeks at a time” on prisoners rounded up in the ‘war on terror’ launched in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks on the United States.

The worst treatment was meted out a secret CIA detention site dubbed COBALT where ‘unauthorised’ interrogation techniques were used in 2002.

Almost no detailed records were found for the interrogations at this site. The country that hosted the site was also kept secret in the heavily redacted report.

Many of the techniques detailed in the report were never approved by either the CIA operations handbook or the Department of Justice. Several prisoners required medical treatment afterwards.

Beginning with the CIA’s first high-value al Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah, suspects were routinely slammed against a wall by their interrogators and hit with rolled up towels. Facial slaps, or ‘insults,’ as well as stomach punches were also used.

The interrogators also used ‘attention grasps’ in which the prisoner is grabbed with both hands, one on each side of the collar and pulled towards the interrogator.

This involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, or more than a week, usually standing or in stress positions, sometimes with their hands shackled above their heads, chained to the ceiling.

At least five detainees suffered ‘disturbing hallucinations’ but in at least two cases the CIA continued with the interrogation method.

Over 20 days, Abu Zubaydah spent 266 hours in a large coffin-size box, and 29 hours in an even smaller one during his interrogation at what was dubbed Detention Site Green.

In the COBALT facility, dubbed a ‘dungeon’ by the chief of interrogations, prisoners were kept in complete darkness, often shackled with their hands above their heads and often nude.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10^th, 2014.