[Reader-list] Tales from torture's dark world

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Howsoever much one might dislike American policies, it is sheer idiocy to call America undemocratic.

--- On Tue, 3/17/09, M Javed <javedmasoo at gmail.com> wrote:

From: M Javed <javedmasoo at gmail.com>
Subject: [Reader-list] Tales from torture's dark world
To: "sarai-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 12:17 PM

Guantánamo might probably be closed down soon, but these tales of
torture will keep reminding us that America is as undemocratic,
ruthless and unjust as the terrorists are.
------

Tales from torture's dark world
By Mark Danner
Sunday, March 15, 2009

On a bright sunny day two years ago, President George W. Bush strode
into the East Room of the White House and informed the world that the
United States had created a dark and secret universe to hold and
interrogate captured terrorists.

"In addition to the terrorists held at Guantánamo," the president
said, "a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives
captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the
United States, in a separate program operated by the Central
Intelligence Agency."

At these places, Mr. Bush said, "the C.I.A. used an alternative set of
procedures." He added: "These procedures were designed to be safe, to
comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The
Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and
determined them to be lawful."

This speech will stand, I believe, as George W. Bush's most important:
perhaps the only historic speech he ever gave. In his fervent defense
of his government's "alternative set of procedures" and his
equally
fervent insistence that they were "lawful," he set out before the
country America's dark moral epic of torture, in the coils of whose
contradictions we find ourselves entangled still.

At the same time, perhaps unwittingly, Mr. Bush made it possible that
day for those on whom the alternative set of procedures were performed
eventually to speak. For he announced that he would send 14
"high-value detainees" from dark into twilight: They would be
transferred from the overseas "black sites" to Guantánamo. There,
while awaiting trial, the International Committee of the Red Cross
would be "advised of their detention, and will have the opportunity to
meet with them."

A few weeks later, from Oct. 6 to 11 and then from Dec. 4 to 14, 2006,
Red Cross officials whose duty it is to monitor compliance with the
Geneva Conventions and to supervise treatment of prisoners of war
traveled to Guantánamo and began interviewing the prisoners. Their
stated goal was to produce a report that would "provide a description
of the treatment and material conditions of detention of the 14 during
the period they were held in the C.I.A. detention program," periods
ranging "from 16 months to almost four and a half years."

As the Red Cross interviewers informed the detainees, their report was
not intended to be released to the public but, "to the extent that
each detainee agreed for it to be transmitted to the authorities," to
be given in strictest secrecy to officials of the government agency
that had been in charge of holding them in this case the Central
Intelligence Agency, to whose acting general counsel, John Rizzo, the
report was sent on Feb. 14, 2007.

The result is a document, labeled "confidential" and clearly intended
only for the eyes of those senior American officials, that tells a
story of what happened to each of the 14 detainees inside the black
sites.

A short time ago, this document came into my hands and I have set out
the stories it tells in a longer article in The New York Review of
Books. Because these stories were taken down confidentially in patient
interviews by professionals from the International Committee of the
Red Cross, and not intended for public consumption, they have an
unusual claim to authenticity.

Indeed, since the detainees were kept strictly apart and isolated,
both at the black sites and at Guantánamo, the striking similarity in
their stories would seem to make fabrication extremely unlikely. As
its authors state in their introduction, "The I.C.R.C. wishes to
underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided
separately by each of the 14 adds particular weight to the information
provided below."

Beginning with the chapter headings on its contents page "suffocation
by water," "prolonged stress standing," "beatings by use of
a collar,"
"confinement in a box" the document makes compelling and chilling
reading. The stories recounted in its fewer than 50 pages lead
inexorably to this unequivocal conclusion, which, given its source,
has the power of a legal determination: "The allegations of ill
treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill
treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A.
program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In
addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or
in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

Perhaps one should start with the story of the first man to whom,
according to news reports, the president's "alternative set of
procedures" were applied:

"I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room
measured approximately 4 meters by 4 meters. The room had three solid
walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it
from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed.
After some time, I think it was several days, but can't remember
exactly, I was transferred to a chair where I was kept, shackled by
hands and feet for what I think was the next two to three weeks.
During this time I developed blisters on the underside of my legs due
to the constant sitting. I was only allowed to get up from the chair
to go [to] the toilet, which consisted of a bucket.

"I was given no solid food during the first two or three weeks, while
sitting on the chair. I was only given Ensure and water to drink. At
first the Ensure made me vomit, but this became less with time.

"The cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold. Very loud,
shouting-type music was constantly playing. It kept repeating about
every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. Sometimes the music stopped and was
replaced by a loud hissing or crackling noise.

"The guards were American, but wore masks to conceal their faces. My
interrogators did not wear masks."

So begins the story of Abu Zubaydah, a senior member of Al Qaeda,
captured in a raid in Pakistan in March 2002. The arrest of an active
terrorist with actionable information was a coup for the United
States.

After being treated for his wounds he had been shot in the stomach,
leg and groin during his capture Abu Zubaydah was brought to one of
the black sites, probably in Thailand, and placed in that white room.

It is important to note that Abu Zubaydah was not alone with his
interrogators, that everyone in that white room guards, interrogators,
doctor was in fact linked directly, and almost constantly, to senior
intelligence officials on the other side of the world. "It wasn't up
to individual interrogators to decide, 'Well, I'm going to slap him.
Or I'm going to shake him,'" said John Kiriakou, a C.I.A. officer
who
helped capture Abu Zubaydah, in an interview with ABC News.

Every one of the steps taken with regard to Abu Zubaydah "had to have
the approval of the deputy director for operations. So before you laid
a hand on him, you had to send in the cable saying, 'He's
uncooperative. Request permission to do X.'"

He went on: "The cable traffic back and forth was extremely
specific.... No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard."

Shortly after Abu Zubaydah was captured, C.I.A. officers briefed the
National Security Council's principals committee, including Vice
President Dick Cheney, the national security adviser, Condoleezza
Rice, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, in detail on the
interrogation plans for the prisoner. As the interrogations proceeded,
so did the briefings, with George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, bringing
to senior officials almost daily reports of the techniques applied.

At the time, the spring and summer of 2002, Justice Department
officials, led by John Yoo, were working on a memorandum, now known
informally as "the torture memo," which claimed that for an
"alternative procedure" to be considered torture, and thus illegal,
it
would have to cause pain of the sort "that would be associated with
serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or
permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will
likely result." The memo was approved in August 2002, thus serving as
a legal "green light" for interrogators to apply the most aggressive
techniques to Abu Zubaydah:

"I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a
towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash
me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room."

The prisoner was then put in a coffin-like black box, about 4 feet by
3 feet and 6 feet high, "for what I think was about one and a half to
two hours.

"The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside....
They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the
light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I
was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had
been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this
wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think
that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the
impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against
the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury."

After this beating, Abu Zubaydah was placed in a small box
approximately three feet tall.

"They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and
restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright,
I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The
stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the
leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about three
months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but
when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty
inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I
don't know how long I remained in the small box; I think I may have
slept or maybe fainted.

"I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly, and
put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly
with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the
interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth
so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed
and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the
straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited.

"The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same
torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water
poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more
backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer
time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was
hopeless."

After being placed again in the tall box, Abu Zubaydah "was then taken
out and again a towel was wrapped around my neck and I was smashed
into the wall with the plywood covering and repeatedly slapped in the
face by the same two interrogators as before.

"I was then made to sit on the floor with a black hood over my head
until the next session of torture began. The room was always kept very
cold. This went on for approximately one week."

Walid bin Attash, a Saudi involved with planning the attacks on
American embassies in Africa in 1998 and on the Navy destroyer Cole in
2000, was captured in Pakistan on April 29, 2003:

"On arrival at the place of detention in Afghanistan I was stripped
naked. I remained naked for the next two weeks.... I was kept in a
standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms above my
head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running
across the width of the cell. The cell was dark with no light,
artificial or natural."

This forced standing, with arms shackled above the head, seems to have
become standard procedure. It proved especially painful for Mr. bin
Attash, who had lost a leg fighting in Afghanistan:

"After some time being held in this position my stump began to hurt so
I removed my artificial leg to relieve the pain. Of course my good leg
then began to ache and soon started to give way so that I was left
hanging with all my weight on my wrists."

Cold water was used on Mr. bin Attash in combination with beatings and
the use of a plastic collar, which seems to have been a refinement of
the towel that had been looped around Abu Zubaydah's neck:

"On a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped
around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the
interrogation room. It was also placed around my neck when being taken
out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead me along the
corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the
corridor during such movements.

"Also on a daily basis during the first two weeks I was made to lie on
a plastic sheet placed on the floor which would then be lifted at the
edges. Cold water was then poured onto my body with buckets.... I
would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold water for several
minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation."

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the key planner of the 9/11 attacks, was
captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003. After three days in what he
believes was a prison in Afghanistan, Mr. Mohammed was put in a
tracksuit, blindfold, hood and headphones, and shackled and placed
aboard a plane. He quickly fell asleep. On arrival, however, he
realized he had come a long way:

"I could see at one point there was snow on the ground. Everybody was
wearing black, with masks and army boots, like Planet X people. I
think the country was Poland. I think this because on one occasion a
water bottle was brought to me without the label removed. It had [an]
e-mail address ending in '.pl.'"

He was stripped and put in a small cell. "I was kept for one month in
the cell in a standing position with my hands cuffed and shackled
above my head and my feet cuffed and shackled to a point in the
floor."

"Of course during this month I fell asleep on some occasions while
still being held in this position. This resulted in all my weight
being applied to the handcuffs around my wrist, resulting in open and
bleeding wounds. [Scars consistent with this allegation were visible
on both wrists as well as on both ankles.] Both my feet became very
swollen after one month of almost continual standing."

For interrogation, Mr. Mohammed was taken to a different room. The
sessions lasted for as long as eight hours and as short as four.

"If I was perceived not to be cooperating I would be put against a
wall and punched and slapped in the body, head and face. A thick
flexible plastic collar would also be placed around my neck so that it
could then be held at the two ends by a guard who would use it to slam
me repeatedly against the wall. The beatings were combined with the
use of cold water, which was poured over me using a hose-pipe."

As with Abu Zubaydah, the harshest sessions involved the "alternative
set of procedures" used in sequence and in combination, one technique
intensifying the effects of the others:

"The beatings became worse and I had cold water directed at me from a
hose-pipe by guards while I was still in my cell. The worst day was
when I was beaten for about half an hour by one of the interrogators.
My head was banged against the wall so hard that it started to bleed.
Cold water was poured over my head. This was then repeated with other
interrogators. Finally I was taken for a session of water boarding.
The torture on that day was finally stopped by the intervention of the
doctor."

Reading the Red Cross report, one becomes somewhat inured to the
"alternative set of procedures" as they are described: The cold and
repeated violence grow numbing. Against this background, the
descriptions of daily life of the detainees in the black sites, in
which interrogation seems merely a periodic heightening of
consistently imposed brutality, become more striking.

Here again is Mr. Mohammed:

"After each session of torture I was put into a cell where I was
allowed to lie on the floor and could sleep for a few minutes.
However, due to shackles on my ankles and wrists I was never able to
sleep very well.... The toilet consisted of a bucket in the cell,
which I could use on request"  he was shackled standing, his hands
affixed to the ceiling  "but I was not allowed to clean myself after
toilet during the first month.... I wasn't given any clothes for the
first month. Artificial light was on 24 hours a day, but I never saw
sunlight."

Abu Zubaydah, Walid bin Attash, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed  these men
almost certainly have blood on their hands. There is strong reason to
believe that they had critical parts in planning and organizing
terrorist operations that caused the deaths of thousands of people. So
in all likelihood did the other "high-value detainees" whose
treatment
while secretly confined by the United States is described in the Red
Cross report.

>From everything we know, many or all of these men deserve to be tried
and punished  to be "brought to justice," as President Bush vowed
they would be. The fact that judges, military or civilian, throw out
cases of prisoners who have been tortured  and have already done so
at Guantánamo  means it is highly unlikely that they will be brought
to justice anytime soon.

For the men who have committed great crimes, this seems to mark
perhaps the most important and consequential sense in which "torture
doesn't work." The use of torture deprives the society whose laws have
been so egregiously violated of the possibility of rendering justice.
Torture destroys justice. Torture in effect relinquishes this sacred
right in exchange for speculative benefits whose value is, at the
least, much disputed.

As I write, it is impossible to know definitively what benefits in
intelligence, in national security, in disrupting Al Qaeda the
president's approval of use of an "alternative set of procedures"
might have brought to the United States. Only a thorough
investigation, which we are now promised, much belatedly, by the
Senate Intelligence Committee, can determine that.

What we can say with certainty, in the wake of the Red Cross report,
is that the United States tortured prisoners and that the Bush
administration, including the president himself, explicitly and
aggressively denied that fact.

We can also say that the decision to torture, in a political war with
militant Islam, harmed American interests by destroying the democratic
and Constitutional reputation of the United States, undermining its
liberal sympathizers in the Muslim world and helping materially in the
recruitment of young Muslims to the extremist cause.

By deciding to torture, we freely chose to embrace the caricature they
had made of us. The consequences of this choice, legal, political and
moral, now confront us. Time and elections are not enough to make them
go away.

Mark Danner, a professor of journalism at the University of
California, Berkeley, and Bard College, is the author of "Torture and
Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror." This essay is drawn
from a longer article in the new issue of The New York Review of
Books, available at www.nybooks.com.

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