Sleep deprivation, death threats used

Treatment in secret prisons a decade ago was worse than the government told Congress or the public, said the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Five hundred pages were released, representing the executive summary and conclusions of a still-classified 6,700-page full investigation.

Tactics included weeks of sleep deprivation, slapping and slamming of detainees against walls, confining them to small boxes, keeping them isolated for prolonged periods and threatening them with death. Three detainees faced the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. Many developed psychological problems.

But the “enhanced interrogation techniques” didn’t produce the results that really mattered, the report asserts in its most controversial conclusion.

After al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan, the CIA received permission to use waterboarding, sleep deprivation, close confinement and other techniques. Agency officials added unauthorised methods into the mix. At least five men in CIA detention received “rectal rehydration,” a form of feeding through the rectum. The report found no medical necessity for the treatment.

Others received “ice baths” and death threats. At least three in captivity were told their families would suffer, with CIA officers threatening to harm their children, sexually abuse the mother of one man, and cut the throat of another man’s mother.

Zubaydah was held in a secret facility in Thailand, called “detention Site Green” in the report. Early on, with CIA officials believing he had information on an imminent plot, Zubaydah was left isolated for 47 days without questioning, the report says. Later, he was subjected to the panoply of techniques. He later suffered mental problems.

He wasn’t alone. In September 2002, at a facility referred to as Cobalt — understood as the CIA’s “Salt Pit” in Afghanistan — detainees were kept isolated and in darkness. Their cells had only a bucket for human waste.

Redha al-Najar, a former Osama bin Laden bodyguard, endured a month of sleep deprivation and was left a “broken man.” But the treatment got worse, with officials lowering food rations, shackling him in the cold and giving him a diaper instead of toilet access.

Gul Rahman, a suspected extremist, received enhanced interrogation there in late 2002, shackled to a wall in his cell and forced to rest on a bare concrete floor in only a sweatshirt. The next day he was dead from hypothermia.

Justice Department investigations into that and another death of a CIA detainee resulted in no charges.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, was waterboarded 183 times. Though officers noted he wasn’t becoming more compliant, they waterboarded him for 10 more days.