Human Rights Watch report detailing unusually cruel torture techniques used by the CIA in Libya, under the Bush Administration, including prolonged diapering, insects and water boarding.
Wired News did a report recently detailing some of the alleged Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture techniques used by operatives in Libya (see article: U.S. Used This Torture Box to Interrogate Gadhafi’s Enemies…
The article alleges that the CIA engaged in all sorts of horrific abuses including “Prolonged diapering” which was permissible under the “enhanced interrogation” technique mentioned by former CIA Director George Tenet in 2003-era CIA documents declassified in 2009 (see article: The Mysterious Eleventh Torture Technique: Prolonged Diapering? http://washingtonindependent.com/56394/the-mysterious-eleventh-torture-technique-prolongued-diapering ).
See also: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/helping-gadhafi-torture/all/).
Other approved torture techniques described included “the attention grasp, walling, the facial hold, the facial slap (insult slap), the abdominal slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation beyond 72 hours … the use of harmless insects, the water board.”
In 2002, Bush administration officials considered a CIA request to place al-Qaida member Abu Zubaydah inside a “confinement box.”
Detainees reported that they were “restrained in painful stress positions for long periods of time,” “beaten and slammed into walls,” “denied food”, “denied sleep by continuous, deafeningly loud Western music” and “subjected to different forms of water torture including “water-boarding.”
Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized captive, thus causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage and death.
See article: Open Letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzaleshttp://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/04/05/open-letter-attorney-general-alberto-gonzales ).
The Human Rights Watch report stands as a damning indictment against the CIA. It alleges that “the United States played the most extensive role in the abuses (torture) in Libya. The article alsomentioned the fact that the United Kingdom was “involved” in abuse and torture as well (see shocking report: Delivered into enemy hands: U.S. lead Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/libya0912webwcover_1.pdf