AFP - Wednesday, February 6, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - CIA director Michael Hayden for the first time admitted publicly Tuesday that the agency had used "waterboarding," or simulated drowning, in interrogations of three top Al-Qaeda detainees nearly five years ago.
The technique, which critics say is tantamount to torture, was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a time when further catastrophic attacks on the United States were believed to be imminent, Hayden said.
"Let me make it very clear and to state so officially in front of this committee that waterboarding has been used on only three detainees," he told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"It was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was used on Abu Zubaydah. And it was used on Nashiri."
Mohammed has claimed to be the operational mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Abu Zubaydah is alleged to have been an aide to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. And al-Nashiri is alleged to have been the operational commander of the suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
All three were initially held and interrogated at secret CIA-run detention centers overseas before being transferred in 2006 to a military-run facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
No comments:
Post a Comment