CIA threats to detainees' families exposed

CIA threats to detainees' families exposed


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Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 August 2009 21.56 BST
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An internal CIA report published yesterday reveals a host of incidents in which its interrogators went far beyond acceptable bounds, including threatening an al-Qaida leader that his children would be killed and hinting to another suspect that his mother would be raped in front of him.
The CIA document, which the agency fought for years to keep secret, was released after a court action by a civil rights group. It described interrogation techniques that were "unauthorised, improvised, inhumane and undocumented".
Interrogators, questioning al-Qaida and other suspects at Guantánamo and secret prisons round the world, took a power drill and a handgun into an interrogation room and also staged a mock execution in a cell next door.
The report says interrogators threatened Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, that if there was another attack on the US, "we're going to kill your children".
In a separate incident, an interrogator told a suspected al-Qaida leader, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, that if he did not talk "we could get your mother in here. We can bring your family in here". The report added that the interrogator wanted Nashiri to infer that the "interrogation technique involves sexually abusing female relatives in front of the detainee".
As a result of the report, the US attorney general, Eric Holder, is to order a special investigation into whether criminal proceedings should be brought against some of the interrogators involved.
Among various unauthorised techniques, the document reveals that in July 2002, an officer "reportedly used a 'pressure point' technique with both of his hands on the detainee's neck, (name blacked out) manipulated his fingers to restrict the detainee's carotid artery".
Some of the techniques were judged to have been a failure, with the mock execution described as "transparently a ruse, and no benefit was derived from it". But the document says valuable intelligence was gained on various plots round the world, including one to hijack aircraft to fly into Heathrow airport.
The report quotes concerns by some CIA officers that action might be taken against them in the future. One said: "Ten years from now we're going to be sorry we're doing this ... [but] it has to be done."