Newly Released CIA Documents Describe Systematic Torture of Detainees

By GottaLaff

Within the next week or so, I'll be posting series of rather lengthy posts about conversations I've been having with the lawyer of a Gitmo detainee. I'll have quotes from the detainee and some insight into the Obama administration regarding Gitmo and its prisoners.

I have been told by the lawyer that I am most likely now being monitored because of my frequent correspondence/phone calls with him.

In the meantime:

The CIA released still-highly redacted documents in which Guantánamo Bay prisoners describe abuse and torture they suffered in CIA custody. The documents were released as part of an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking uncensored transcripts from Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) that determine if prisoners held by the Defense Department at Guantánamo qualify as "enemy combatants." In previously released versions of the documents, the CIA had removed virtually all references to the abuse of prisoners in their custody; the documents released today are still heavily blacked out but include some new information.[...]

These statements include:

• Abu Zubaydah: "After months of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries that they inflicted to my eye, to my stomach, to my bladder, and my left thigh and my reproductive organs. They didn't care that I almost died from these injuries. Doctors told me that I nearly died four times." "They say ‘this in your diary.' They say ‘see you want to make operation against America.' I say no, the idea is different. They say no, torturing, torturing. I say ‘okay, I do. I was decide to make operation.'"

• Al Nashiri: "[And, they used to] drown me in water."

• Muhammad: "This is what I understand he [CIA interrogator] told me: you are not American and you are not on American soil. So you cannot ask about the Constitution."

• Khan: "In the end, any classified information you have is through…agencies who physically and mentally tortured me."

Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project:

"The Obama administration should make good on its commitment to transparency, stop suppressing information about torture and abuse and hold accountable the officials who put unlawful policies in place."

More information about the ACLU's CSRT FOIA, including the documents released today, is available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/csrtfoia.html

Please take a look at this, while we're on the subject: "Torture, the painful truth."