CIA leaks "inhumane techniques" used on prisoners

UK Independent: Amid a growing row in the US over torture, a list of "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by CIA agents in secret prisons - including near-drowning, freezing, sleep deprivation, shaking and slapping - has been leaked. In at least one case, a prisoner has died.

The techniques have been authorised for use at CIA "black sites" abroad, at which top terror suspects are held. Last week the US-based organisation Human Rights Watch said "ghost detainees" were held at two military bases, in Poland and Romania. Similar sites in half a dozen other countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand and the Indian Ocean base of Diego Garcia, leased from Britain, are now said to have been closed.

The existence of these detention facilities, and what happens inside them, are the most secret aspect of America's "war on terror". In contrast to military-run camps and prisons such as Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where it was impossible to shield all CIA activity from outside scrutiny, the location of the "black sites" and the identities of those held there are made known only to a handful of senior officials in the US. In the host countries, only the president and top intelligence officials are aware of them.

America's covert forces are operating in a climate of impunity, described by Cofer Black, then CIA counter-terrorism chief, who told a congressional committee in 2002: "After 9/11, the gloves were off." At one point, according to Newsweek, the Bush administration formally told the CIA it could not be prosecuted for any technique short of inflicting the kind of pain that accompanies organ failure or death.

The normal justification is that such methods could help avert a terror attack in which thousands might be killed. But are there any cases to prove it? Claims that the "waterboarding" of Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced details of planned attacks on the US were sceptically received by one CIA official, who said: "What we got was probably not truthful. And there's no way of knowing whether what good information they got could not have been obtained by more traditional means."

THE ATTENTION GRAB: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him. Israel, the only democracy to have openly debated coercion of prisoners, declared this legal in 1987, but the Supreme Court ruled it out in 1999

THE ATTENTION SLAP: Interrogators may deliver "an open-handed slap", which is "aimed at causing pain and triggering fear"

THE BELLY SLAP: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage

STANDING FOR HOURS: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to a ring bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are claimed to be effective in yielding confessions

COLD TREATMENT: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept at around 10C, and constantly doused with cold water. Misapplication of this technique is blamed for the death of a detainee in Kabul

WATERBOARDING: The prisoner is bound to a board, head slightly below the feet. Plastic is wrapped over his face and water is poured over him, or his head is lowered into a bath. The gag reflex is automatic; few can endure more than a matter of seconds

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was US Secretary of State, said last week that he knew of more than 70 "questionable deaths" of detainees under US supervision up to the end of 2002, when he left office. That figure, he added, was now around 90.

Tags: CIA, interrogation, torture, abuse, inhumane