New report sheds new light on CIA torture methods

A new report released by Human Rights Watch, Thursday, shed new light on the brutal torture methods that the CIA – the US’ main external spy agency – used during the early 2000s.

The report focuses on the two cases of Ridha al-Najjar and Lofti El Gherissi, both Tunisian nationals, who were arrested in Pakistan in 2002. They were some of the first detainees of what became known as the CIA’s black sites. The report is based on interviews with the two men.

The report details the horrific treatment that both men were subject to and provides information beyond what was already made available via official reports of the US senate. For example, it explains:

the Senate Summary said that al-Najjar was left hanging, chained from a bar over his head, for 22 hours each day for two consecutive days. But al-Najjar told me this “hanging,” as he described it, went on for nearly three months. He was only taken down from the bar about once every 24-hours, for interrogation or other forms of torture. Then he was hung right back up again. And for this entire time he and others were in pitch-black darkness, naked except for diapers, with loud music blaring around the clock.

It goes on to describe some additional forms of torture that were used that had not been revealed previously. These included threats of the electric chair and that El Gherissi  was shown a coffin and told that it was for him. They were also subject to new types of water torture, beyond water boarding, which included dunking in barrels and face down submersion of al-Najjar’s whole body, into a large tub of ice-cold water.

Neither man was fed properly – sometimes forced to eat food containing waist products such as a cigarette butt – and both were forced to wear nappies that were not changed for days. In both cases the torture was overseen by a doctor who would treat the immediate impact of the torture but then allow it to continue.

Neither man was ever charged with a crime and no information regarding the reasoning for the arrests and torture has ever been made public.

The Senate Summary said that the CIA identified al-Najjar as a bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, which he denies. He said everything they accused him of was false and that they never presented any evidence and that’s why they released him. El Gherissi said his interrogators constantly accused him of being a member of Al-Qaeda or of having connections to terrorism, but that this was completely untrue.

Both men continue to live with the consequences of these events. Either through “chronic pain” or destitution.