CIA used Westlife song for torture

The Central Intelligence Agency in the US used the music of Irish boy band Westlife to torture a prisoner it was interrogating in Afghanistan, according to a civil liberties group that filed a lawsuit against the men who designed and implemented the CIA torture programme.

On Tuesday, three former CIA prisoners represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against psychologists James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen. One of the former prisoners, Gul Rahman, died as a result of the torture suffered.

The ACLU described some of the methods deployed by the CIA as “barbaric”. It filed an 82-page complaint against Mitchell and Jessen in a federal court in Washington.