The UN has called for the prosecution of those behind a ‘criminal conspiracy’ at the CIA that led to the ‘brutal’ torture of detainees.
Ben Emmerson, United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, said those responsible for planning, sanctioning or carrying out crimes including waterboarding should not escape justice – even senior officials from George W Bush’s administration. “It is now time to take action,” he said in a statement from Geneva. “The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy … must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes. “The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the US Government provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal accountability.”
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth also said that the CIA’s actions were criminal “and can never be justified”. “The Senate report summary should forever put to rest CIA denials that it engaged in torture, which is criminal and can never be justified,” he said. “The report shows the repeated claims that harsh measures were needed to protect Americans are utter fiction.
“Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of officials, torture will remain a ‘policy option’ for future presidents’
The Senate Intelligence Committee report, which was published yesterday, said that interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was “far worse” than the CIA had portrayed to the US government.
Some of their methods included:
- Sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours, often standing or in painful positions
- Waterboarding methods that had deteriorated to “a series of near drownings”
- ‘Rectal rehydration’ and other painful procedures that were never approved
- Use of insects placed in a confinement box
- ‘Attention grasp’, where individual is grasped with both hands on each side of a collar opening
- ‘Walling’, where an individual is pushed against a wall quickly
- Saudi suspect Abu Zubaydah was kept confined in a coffin-sized (53cm x 76cm) box for hours
- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 65 times over a period of two days
The report revealed that at least 26 of 119 known detainees were wrongfully held, and for months longer than they should have been.
The CIA was also accused of misleading the public and politicians – and justifying its use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques with “inaccurate claims of their effectiveness”.
They were found to have used examples of thwarted UK plots, such as a plan by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to hijack planes and attack Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf, the capture of al Qaida UK operative Dhiren Barot and the arrest of attempted British shoe-bomber Saajid Badat, as proof that torture methods had “saved lives”.
