Friday, April 17, 2009

More of George W Bush Torture Techniques

Keeping detainees in dark, cramped boxes with insects to exploit their fears, forced nudity, prolonged sleep deprivation and slamming detainees into walls are but some of brutal interrogation techniques authorized by former US President George W. Bush, reported the Washington Post on Friday, April 17. "We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history," US President Barack Obama said as he blew the lid on harsh CIA interrogation techniques approved by his predecessor.

The Obama administration made public four blacked-out memos detailing CIA interrogation techniques against terror suspects.

The memos, written in 2002 and 2005 by the Bush-era legal officials, reveal the use of dietary manipulation, forced nudity and facial and abdominal slaps with detainees.

In one technique known as "walling," interrogators could push a detainee against a false wall, so his shoulder blades make a slamming noise and make him think the impact is greater than in reality.

"A detainee may be walled one time (one impact with the wall) to make a point, or twenty to thirty times consecutively when the interrogator requires a more significant response to a question," according to the memo.

The memos also show interrogators asked for a ruling on whether the placing of a harmless insect in a cramped box with detainee Abu Zubaydah equated to torture.

"(The technique) certainly does not cause physical pain" and therefore could not be termed as torture and should be permissible, one of the memos said.

Similarly, techniques included waterboarding or simulated drowning, walling and sleep deprivation also fell short of torture, the memos said.

Another memo details a 'prototypical interrogation,' which begins with a detainee stripped of his clothes, shackled, and hooded, "with the walling collar over his head and around his neck."

Criminal Conduct

Rights groups and Senators denounced the brutal techniques as showing the criminal conduct of the Bush administration.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy said the memos are "chilling" and that their content "is as alarming as I feared it would be."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin called for confronting the abuses to "restore America's image as a country that not only espouses ideals of human rights, but lives by them."

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