Interrogations | UN-Truth

Time.com is covering a number of aspects of the horrifying reports that two detainees were tortured by various techniques, including waterboarding.

One of the Time reports states that “Defenders of waterboarding say that the procedure, while awful for the prisoner, is relatively safe and has few long-term effects. But doctors and psychologists who work with torture victims disagree strongly. They say that victims of American waterboarding—like the Chileans submitted to the submarino under Pinochet—are likely to be psychologically damaged for life. ‘This is an utterly terrifying event’, says Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/New York University School of Medicine Program for Survivors of Torture”…

Continue reading No doubt it was torture

The title of the NYTimes story was sickening, and compelling. It was difficult to click on the link.

It said that “The New York Times reported in 2007 that Mr. Mohammed had been barraged more than 100 times with harsh interrogation methods, causing C.I.A. officers to worry that they might have crossed legal limits and to halt his questioning. But the precise number and the exact nature of the interrogation method was not previously known … The Senate Intelligence Committee has begun a yearlong, closed-door investigation of the C.I.A. interrogation program, in part to assess claims of Bush administration officials that brutal treatment, including slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in standing positions for days and confining them in small boxes, was necessary to get information. The fact that waterboarding was repeated so many times may raise questions about its effectiveness, as well as about assertions by Bush administration officials that their methods were used under strict guidelines. A footnote to another 2005 Justice Department memo released Thursday said waterboarding was used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the C.I.A. rules permitted”.

Continue reading Worse than chilling: NYTimes + blog on CIA memos — two suspects waterboarded a total of 266 times – Abu Zubayda implicated Ramzi Binalshibh