Court calls US "enhanced interrogation techniques" torture

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Updated 3:11 pm CDT, Thursday, September 19, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal court in San Francisco has taken the unusual step of using the word "torture" to describe the treatment of a Palestinian man while he was in CIA custody following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals used the word in a 2-1 ruling to describe the harsh interrogation methods used against a prisoner known as Abu Zubaydah while he was held in clandestine CIA detention facilities overseas.

Zubaydah has been held without charge since September 2006 at the detention center on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

His lawyers were seeking depositions from two private contractors who designed the CIA interrogation program. The Ninth Circuit ruling said the two contractors could face limited questioning.


Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Court-calls-US-enhanced-interrogation-14453123.php

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(Short article, no more at link.)

[alwaysinasnit]

1. Do you think this might entangle CIA director Gina Haspel?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/cia-deputy-director-gina-haspel-torture-thailand.html

.....

The elevation of Ms. Haspel, a veteran widely respected among her colleagues, to the No. 2 job at the C.I.A. was a rare public signal of how, under the Trump administration, the agency is being led by officials who appear to take a far kinder view of one of its darker chapters than their immediate predecessors.

Over the past eight years, C.I.A. leaders defended dozens of agency personnel who had taken part in the now-banned torture program, even as they vowed never to resume the same harsh interrogation methods. But President Trump has said repeatedly that he thinks torture works. And the new C.I.A. chief, Mike Pompeo, has said that waterboarding and other techniques do not even constitute torture, and praised as “patriots” those who used such methods in the early days of the fight against Al Qaeda.
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Ms. Haspel, who has spent most of her career undercover, would certainly fall within Mr. Pompeo’s description. She played a direct role in the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition program,” under which captured militants were handed to foreign governments and held at secret facilities, where they were tortured by agency personnel.

.....

[royable]

2. For years I have had a great desire to subject people who say waterboarding isn't torture

to a few weeks of 20x/day waterboarding sessions, and see if their opinion changes as a result.

[alwaysinasnit]

3. Fantasy thinking here but, if ever Cheney and cabel were brought to justice, waterboarding is

the punishment I would favor.

[bluestarone]

4. It would take ONE session

They (Cheney and Cabel)would squeal like pigs!

[PhoenixDem]

5. Finally some sense

It's about time