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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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October 31st,
2009 - Documents Detail Conditions Found at Secret C.I.A. Jails |
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Documents
Detail Conditions Found at Secret C.I.A. Jails By Scott Shane & Charlie Savage New York Times October 31, 2009 F.B.I. agents who arrived at
a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to
the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a C.I.A.
official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “How close is
each technique to the ‘rack and screw,’” according to hundreds of pages of
partly declassified documents released Friday by the Justice Department. The documents include
handwritten notes, apparently prepared by Justice Department officials,
discussing the possibility of prosecuting some employees of the Central
Intelligence Agency. The notes reveal that the Justice Department considered
prosecuting a C.I.A. interrogator for a previously reported incident in which
a detainee was threatened with a gun and a power drill, but it says
department officials declined to prosecute the case. The documents were released
in the latest response to several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed
by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, a Washington
advocacy group. Some are new versions of documents previously released. Newly disclosed passages
from a 2008 report by the Justice Department inspector general describe what
agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation saw at the C.I.A. jail where
Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks, was being questioned. The F.B.I. agents helped
C.I.A. officers prepare questions for Mr. bin al-Shibh but “were denied
direct access to him for four or five days,” the report said. Then an F.B.I.
agent, identified as “Thomas,” was allowed to see him and found him “naked
and chained to the floor.” The agent told the inspector
general that “he obtained valuable actionable intelligence in a short time
but that the C.I.A. quickly shut down the interview,” the report said. The September 2002 visit was
the last F.B.I. involvement in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas interrogations,
which senior F.B.I. officials questioned on grounds of both legality and
effectiveness. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/us/01justice.html |