Donald Trump on terrorism suspects: ‘They’ deserve waterboarding

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says the US should engage in much more aggressive interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects such as waterboarding as he continues to push a hard, albeit vague, line on national security after the Paris attacks.

Speaking to thousands at a packed Columbus, Ohio, rally, Trump said techniques practiced until late in the Bush administration and disavowed by current president Barack Obama should be brought back because they work.

That includes waterboarding, he said, a practice that simulates drowning. He said he would restore waterboarding “in a heartbeat” and approve more than that.

He told a crowd that “you bet your ass” he would bring it back into use.

A Senate Intelligence Committee report last year concluded that harsh interrogation techniques failed to produce information that the CIA couldn’t have obtained elsewhere or did not already have.

Republican leaders objected to the report’s findings, as did some former CIA officials, who said they gained vital intelligence.

Trump, who has been advocating a bullish, if vague, approach to foreign policy, declared: “Only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.”

He went on: “If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they’re doing to us.”

Trump had said a day earlier that he believed the US should bring back enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, because they are “peanuts” compared with the torture methods of Islamic State.

Trump also dug in his heels over his claims that he saw “thousands” of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks in Jersey City.

There is no evidence in news archives of mass celebrations by Muslims in Jersey City, as he alleged on the weekend.

He appeared to row back, saying he “saw people getting together and in fairly large numbers celebrating as the World Trade Center was coming down” both “on television and I read about on the internet”.

However, he said he had received hundreds of calls and tweets in recent days from people telling him they had also witnessed the scenes he described.

As evidence, Trump cited a September 18, 2001, story in The Washington Post that said, in the hours after the attacks, authorities “detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river”.