Cables detail CIA waterboarding at secret prison run by Gina Haspel
Newly-declassified documents have exposed a previously unknown level of brutality at a US torture site in Thailand operated by current CIA Director Gina Haspel.
Haspel talked in detail about torture of a terror suspect by means of waterboarding and other controversial methods while she was running the secret black site, according to previously classified cables.
The new cables describe the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian national accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing of the US Navy destroyer Cole off the coast of Yemen.
The cables dating from 2002 detail Nashiri’s treatment during interrogation, including forced nudity, shackling, being slammed against walls, being confined in a small box and mock executions, as well as waterboarding.
The documents graphically describe violent attempts by interrogators to gather information about possible future attacks against the United States from Nashiri, as he continued to say he had none.
Nashiri’s detention, both in Thailand and after his transfer in December 2002 to a second secret CIA site in Poland, was briefly described in a report on CIA torture techniques released in late 2014 by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
But many specifics about what happened to Nashiri during his several-week stay at the Thailand facility, while Haspel was briefly in charge, have not been made public.
He was later transferred to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he remains.
Haspel, a career clandestine officer and the first woman to lead the CIA, came under sharp questioning during her Senate confirmation hearing in May about the agency’s torture techniques.
These newly disclosed torture documents are news to the American people — but are almost certainly not news for the senators who voted to confirm Haspel.
— ACLU (@ACLU) August 10, 2018
To be clear: Senators voted for Haspel to lead the CIA even after reading about her horrific role in the use of torture. https://t.co/KuXqHswaJO
The National Security Archive, a private research institute, which helped declassify the cables after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, slammed the practice and called for accountability.
We have new details of torture under Gina Haspel's leadership in 2002. I was a NO vote on Gina Haspel to lead the CIA back in May and I'm still every bit as confident that her involvement with torture makes her unfit for CIA Director. Disgraceful. https://t.co/VtcUuCq5Vi
— Tina Smith (@TinaSmithMN) August 11, 2018
It said the torture overseen by Haspel is second only to what the public saw in photos from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Richard Kammen, Nashiri’s lawyer, said that his client was brutally tortured by the CIA and that he hoped the truth would come out before he went on trial. “Ultimately, the public will be horrified by the level of brutality employed by the CIA,” he told The New York Times.
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