CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach interrogators torture techniques

[essentialsaltes]

Newly declassified documents reveal Ammar al-Baluchi was repeatedly slammed against a wall while naked until all trainees received ‘certification’ [in how to slam people's heads against walls]

A detainee at a secret CIA detention site in Afghanistan was used as a living prop to teach trainee interrogators, who lined up to take turns at knocking his head against a plywood wall, leaving him with brain damage, according to a US government report.

The details of the torture of Ammar al-Baluchi are in a 2008 report by the CIA’s inspector general, newly declassified as part of a court filing by his lawyers aimed at getting him an independent medical examination.

According to the inspector general’s report, the CIA was aware that the 2003 rendition of the detainee, Ammar al-Baluchi, from Pakistani custody to the “black site” north of Kabul was conducted “extra-legally,” because at the time he was in Pakistani jurisdiction and no longer represented a terrorist threat.

A neuropsychologist carried out an MRI of Baluchi’s head in late 2018 and found “abnormalities indicating moderate to severe brain damage” in parts of his brain, affecting memory formation and retrieval as well as behavioral regulation. The specialist found that the “abnormalities observed were consistent with traumatic brain injury.”

The inspector general’s report also concluded that Baluchi’s treatment did not yield any useful intelligence.

Baluchi spent more than three years in CIA custody, moved between a total of six “black sites” before being transferred in 2006 to Guantánamo Bay, where he is still awaiting trial.

 

[SamanthaAnastasia]

Torture is wrong.

 

[cow451]

Newly declassified documents reveal Ammar al-Baluchi was repeatedly slammed against a wall while naked until all trainees received ‘certification’ [in how to slam people's heads against walls]

A detainee at a secret CIA detention site in Afghanistan was used as a living prop to teach trainee interrogators, who lined up to take turns at knocking his head against a plywood wall, leaving him with brain damage, according to a US government report.

The details of the torture of Ammar al-Baluchi are in a 2008 report by the CIA’s inspector general, newly declassified as part of a court filing by his lawyers aimed at getting him an independent medical examination.

According to the inspector general’s report, the CIA was aware that the 2003 rendition of the detainee, Ammar al-Baluchi, from Pakistani custody to the “black site” north of Kabul was conducted “extra-legally,” because at the time he was in Pakistani jurisdiction and no longer represented a terrorist threat.

A neuropsychologist carried out an MRI of Baluchi’s head in late 2018 and found “abnormalities indicating moderate to severe brain damage” in parts of his brain, affecting memory formation and retrieval as well as behavioral regulation. The specialist found that the “abnormalities observed were consistent with traumatic brain injury.”

The inspector general’s report also concluded that Baluchi’s treatment did not yield any useful intelligence.

Baluchi spent more than three years in CIA custody, moved between a total of six “black sites” before being transferred in 2006 to Guantánamo Bay, where he is still awaiting trial.

Not America's finest moment.

 

[cow451]

Torture is wrong.

It's also an inefficient way to get accurate information

 

[Aryeh Jay]

It's also an inefficient way to get accurate information

Some people are saying that it's an efficient way to get inaccurate information.

 

[cow451]

Some people are saying that it's an efficient way to get inaccurate information.

Good point.

 

[SarahsKnight]

Torture is wrong.

Try teaching that to some Christians on this these very forums, unfortunately. =/

 

[Nithavela]

Remember: you're not on the side of the good guys. You're just on the side of the evil guys on whos clay you were born.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Yeah, I wouldn't consider torture an effective "instrument" of intelligence, but perhaps I'm just naive having never worked in intelligence ops.

There's probably times when it's "worked" in a sense that it's gotten people to give up information that may have been critical, but there's probably a lot more times where people have made false confessions under duress just to make the torture stop.

It's also a bad look all-around for a nation claiming to be "civilized". You'd think with all of the technology and education acquired over the years, our top agencies would've been able to come up with something better than, what's essentially, a slightly more sophisticated version of what they used to do during the Salem Witch Trials.

 

[durangodawood]

Better to just pretend the USA would never sink this low.

 

[RDKirk]

Yeah, I wouldn't consider torture an effective "instrument" of intelligence, but perhaps I'm just naive having never worked in intelligence ops.

There's probably times when it's "worked" in a sense that it's gotten people to give up information that may have been critical, but there's probably a lot more times where people have made false confessions under duress just to make the torture stop.

It's also a bad look all-around for a nation claiming to be "civilized". You'd think with all of the technology and education acquired over the years, our top agencies would've been able to come up with something better than, what's essentially, a slightly more sophisticated version of what they used to do during the Salem Witch Trials.

The CIA is actually a newbie to the interrogation game, not having done it (in any methodical capacity) until after 9/11.

The US Army is the real interrogation guru, with gobs and gobs of experience gained by interrogation of enemy prisoners during America's wars over the years. They've been through the most critical "we need this information in the next x-minutes or our people will be killed" situation many times.

And as well, the US Army has had the most people over the course of wars who have been captured and interrogated. Their experience comes from both sides.

Having worked in intelligence ops, we know that torture does not work. By "does not work," I mean that it's so much more often to provide negative data than positive data that it's worse that useless. Torture will add false data to the mix that will degrade the value of the good data that you have.

The bottom line is that tortured soldiers lie.

You might be able to get a civilian to tell the truth with torture, but if a man has a soldier's mentality--if he's created the comrade bonds of combat, he will lie. They always lie. Maybe not every single word is a lie, but some of those words were lies, and you don't know which ones were.

In fact, the more time-critical the situation is, the more likely a soldier will lie. When the soldier knows he has to resist, deflect, distract, deceive for only a limited amount of time (and only he knows what that amount of time is), he can almost always hold out for that long.

That's why the US Army interrogation field manual does not contain any torture techniques and why their professional interrogators do not torture. They do have other tricks and techniques. Tricking a prisoner into revealing a truth is fair game, as is enticing a prisoner to reveal a truth. (Of course, there will be "amateurs" in uniform who will abuse prisoners under the guise of "interrogating" them, but such men are officially criminals.)

"Do you have a family? A wife? Kids? Yeah? Do you love them? You've been here over a year. Your family doesn't even know you're alive, do they? I have a cell phone here. See. You could call them. Let them know you're alive. I just need to know one thing. Just one thing."

Another reason the Army does not torture is because it's unsoldierly...and such things do count. A torturer takes human beings held helpless and subjects them to deliberate extended cruelty.

If we say--as politicians are prone to do--that extreme situations justly permit extreme measures, that would make torture mandatory with every prisoner because combat is always an "extreme situation." Once torture became normative, torture would become their profession.

No commander wants people who calmly and professionally do such things in their ranks. Civilians don't want it either, because those people are going to come back to marry your children and move next door.