Memos reveal torture of detainees at CIA black site in Afghanistan

New details have been disclosed about the CIA’s torture program at a black site prison near Kabul, Afghanistan, thanks to newly unsealed documents the spy agency and US Defense Department were forced to declassify over a lawsuit filed by victims of the torture program.

The newly revealed papers expose in shocking detail how the agency integrated two contract psychologists to design brutal torture techniques to break detainees’ resistance and give torture the appearance of legality.

Two surviving prisoners and the family of a detainee who died at the ‘Cobalt’ site in Afghanistan reached an out-of-court settlement with CIA psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in August after a lawsuit was filed for their role in the torture.

The CIA and Pentagon were forced to declassify the documents related to the case in pretrial discovery. The memos also capture high-level agency discussions revealing a cover-up in action.

The Cobalt site, which opened outside Kabul in September 2002, was made up of 20 cells, according to the documents. In 16 cells, prisoners were shackled to a metal ring in the wall. In four, designed for sleep deprivation, they stood chained by the wrists to an overhead bar.

The cells were unheated, and inmates were subjected to blaring music around the clock.

“The atmosphere was very good,” Jessen told CIA investigators. “Nasty, but safe.”

The Cobalt site came to be referred to as "The Darkness" by inmates for its full sensory deprivation darkness which detainees experienced round the clock, sometimes for years.

Mitchell and Jessen designed a list of "techniques" to be used to torture prisoners, including waterboarding (causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning and walling (slamming inmates into flexible walls).

The objective was to "reach the stage where we have broken any will or ability of subject to resist or deny providing us information," the pair unambiguously stated.

Jessen had been visiting the site to oversee the interrogation of Gul Rahman, a detainee who was interrogated for several weeks in November.

Rahman, wearing only socks and a diaper in the unheated cells, was subjected to 48 hours of sleep deprivation and cold showers, despite concerns by one supervisor that he might develop hypothermia.

Five days after Jessen left the site, Rahman died of hypothermia. He had been left in his cell naked from the waist down.

The two psychologists were paid $80 million for their work, which included helping interrogate Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, another top al-Qaeda official.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report in 2014 about CIA's brutal detention and interrogation program and its use of various forms of torture on detainees between 2001 and 2006 during the so-called war on terror.

The report concluded that the spy agency’s interrogation methods were far more brutal and less effective than what the agency had publicly acknowledged.

The report also said that not a single terrorist attack was foiled as a result of the use of the so-called harsh interrogation techniques.

Source:

http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/10/10/538161/US-CIA-torture-Cobalt-Kabul

Comments

The wounded US imperialist beast becomes more dangerous than ever as desperately seeks to start a WWIII

globinfo freexchange It seems that the declining Western superpower is losing ground and tries hardly to avoid the inevitable. The US imperialist beast, despite all the destruction that causes, is failing to fulfill its utter objectives. Which in short, are the dissolution of Russia and China, looting their vast resources, as well as the full expansion of the destructive neoliberal model throughout these areas and other countries allied with the Sino-Russian bloc. Most importantly, the wounded beast is loosing much of its strength due to the rapid de-dollarization that has started approximately ten years ago, as dollar had become the front line of the US imperialist sweeping force since the early 70s. As if nothing has changed, the beast insists on using the same tools to prevail in the global geopolitical field, ignoring the unprecedented changes and complexities under current circumstances. In a move (as it seems) of desperation, the United States House of Representative

Atlanta Police Violently Arrest Emory Students & Faculty to Clear Gaza Solidarity Encampment

Democracy Now! As a wave of student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza continues to spread from coast to coast, schools and law enforcement have responded with increasing brutality to campus encampments. One of the most violent police crackdowns took place at Emory University in Atlanta on Thursday, when local and state police swept onto the campus just hours after students had set up tents on the quad in protest against Israel’s war on Gaza as well as the planned police training center known as Cop City. Police used tear gas and stun guns to break up the encampment as they wrestled people to the ground, and are accused of using rubber bullets. Among those arrested were a few faculty members. Democracy Now! spoke with two of the arrested professors: Noëlle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department, and Emil’ Keme, professor of English and Indigenous studies. Also with Palestinian American organizer and medical student Umaymah Mohammad, who describes how Emory has repeat

Indiana University Brings In SNIPERS & Then LIES About It

Katie Halper Katie Halper talks to Aidan Khamis and Bryce Greene, who was arrested at Indiana University where snipers have been brought in. Bryce Greene is a student, writer, organizer and media critic based in Indianapolis. He is a contributor to Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. He was arrested and banned from Indiana University's campus for participating in the Gaza solidarity encampment at Indiana University. Aidan Khamis is an organizer for Palestine Solidarity Committee IU and IU divestment coalition.

"Student Intifada": Stanford, University of Michigan, Indiana University, & more

The Real News Network Seven months into Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, a student-led grassroots movement is spreading across the US and beyond, hearkening back to the student protests of the ‘60s that played a pivotal role in ending the US war in Vietnam. In what is being called the “student intifada,” with over 100 encampments going up at different college and university campuses, students, faculty, grad students, and other campus community members are exercising civil disobedience, occupying space on campuses, defying brutal repression from administrators and police, combatting skewed and wildly lopsided narratives in corporate media, and pressuring their universities to “disclose and divest” their investments in companies and financial institutions connected to Israel. TRNN speaks with encampment organizers/participants from the University of Michigan, the Indiana University, and Stanford University, and gets updates from encampments from New York to California.

Yanis Varoufakis Banned from Germany as Berlin Police Raid & Shut Down Palestinian Conference

Democracy Now! As Germany intensifies its crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices, Democracy Now! spoke with Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis, one of the planned speakers at a conference in Berlin last weekend that was forcibly shut down by police. The Palestine Congress was scheduled to be held for three days, but police stormed the venue as the first panelist spoke. Germany's Interior Ministry had also banned some conference speakers from even entering the country, including Varoufakis, the Palestinian British surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah and the Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta. " This is not about protecting Jewish lives and Jews from antisemitism. It's all about protecting the right of Israel to commit any war crime of its choice, " says Varoufakis. Varoufakis speaks also about freeing Julian Assange and his new book Technofeudalism . Related: Germany again on a dark path towards fascism

Pro-Palestinian Campus Encampments Spread Nationwide Amid Mass Arrests at Columbia, NYU & Yale

Democracy Now! Palestinian solidarity protests and encampments are appearing on college campuses from Massachusetts to California to protest Israel's attacks on Gaza and to call for divestment from Israeli apartheid. This week, police have raided encampments and arrested students at Yale and New York University. Palestinian American scholar and New York University professor Helga Tawil-Souri describes forming a faculty buffer to protect students, negotiating with police, and the ensuing crackdown that led to over 100 arrests Monday night. Uptown in New York City, the encampment at Columbia University is entering its seventh day despite mass arrests of protesters last week. "In my opinion, the NYPD were called in under false pretenses by the president of the university," says Joseph Slaughter, professor at Columbia University. "The university is being run as a sort of ad-hocracy at this point, the senior administration making up policies and procedures and pro

'Make no mistake, the full-scale assault on Rafah would be a human catastrophe': Guterres

Al Jazeera English United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appealed for an end to the bloodshed in Gaza. He says the Middle East is at risk of explosion if the fighting continues. In his speech, Guterres urged Israel’s allies to press its leadership to stop the war on Gaza. “ I appeal to all those with influence over Israel to do everything in their power to help avert even more tragedy. The international community has a shared responsibility to promote a humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and a massive surge in life-saving aid, ” he said. “ It is time for the parties to seize the opportunity and secure a deal for the sake of their own people. ”

Day 1846: Julian Assange still in prison and under slow-motion execution by the Anglo-American imperialist criminals

failed evolution On 11 April 2019, the Ecuadorian government of traitor Lenin Moreno, invited the Metropolitan Police into the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and they arrested Julian Assange . Since then, Assange is kept in Belmarsh high security prison in London, without actual charges. The real reason world's number one political prisoner is still kept in this high security prison, is because he exposed horrendous war crimes carried out by the US imperialists and their allies. The ruthless Western imperialist regime wants to punish the No1 real journalist in the world and make him an example for any Whistleblower or real journalist who will attempt to expose its big crimes in the future. And the Anglo-American axis has now become officially a fascist coalition , framed by the rest of its Western pets. UK's Home Secretary Priti Patel, one of the most ruthless ever, decided to extradite Julian Assange to US. No surprise of course. The only question we had in mind is

Biden PANICS Over Israel's Genocide

Owen Jones Biden's latest move tells us one thing: they're panicking.

the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

Search This Blog