Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaydah) is a Saudi citizen who helped manage the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan. Captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002, he has since been held by the United States as an enemy combatant. Beginning in August 2002, Abu Zubaydah was the first prisoner to undergo enhanced interrogation techniques. There is disagreement among government sources as to how effective these techniques were; some officials contend that Abu Zubaydah gave his most valuable information before they were used; CIA lawyer John Rizzo said he gave more material afterward. [1]
The American intelligence community asserts Khalden was a camp for training al Qaeda recruits in the 1990s, but detainees and other sources have disputed this conclusion. Abu Zubaydah was sent to a black site in Thailand, where he was interrogated first by F.B.I. agents using traditional interrogation techniques and then by CIA employees and contractors, who in August 2002, were authorized to use so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques", as termed by the Bush administration. Since 2006, Abu Zubaydah has been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. While in CIA custody, Zubaydah’s previously damaged left eye was surgically removed. [2] [3]
Although President George W. Bush claimed in 2006 three examples of intelligence derived from the torture of Abu Zubaydah by the CIA, which he said showed that it was justified, later reporting has established that the prisoner gave two of the names under conventional interrogation by the FBI, and intelligence analysts already had leads from other sources to the third person. [4]
The plans originally called for a joint FBI and CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. However, two FBI agents, Ali Soufan and Steve Gaudin, arrived first at the black site in Thailand where Abu Zubaydah was being held. [5] Their interrogation started with standard interview techniques and also included cleaning and dressing Abu Zubaydah's wounds. [6] [7] [8] Ali Soufan stated that "[w]e kept him alive. It wasn't easy, he couldn't drink, he had a fever. I was holding ice to his lips." [6] The agents attempted to convince Abu Zubaydah that they knew of his activities in languages he understood: English and Arabic. [7] [8] Both agents believed they were making good progress in gathering intelligence from Abu Zubaydah. [4] [9]
During these sessions, Abu Zubaydah revealed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as "Mukhtar" to Abu Zubaydah, was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks [10] and that American José Padilla had wanted to use a "dirty bomb" in a terror attack. [4] [5] [6] [7]
When the CIA interrogation team arrived a week or two later than the FBI team, [10] they concluded that Abu Zubaydah was holding back information and that harsher techniques were necessary. [5] [7] [9] The CIA team was led by CIA contractor and former Air Force psychologist James Elmer Mitchell. [6] [11] Mitchell ordered that Abu Zubaydah answer questions or face a gradual increase in aggressive techniques. [6]
In 2009, Soufan testified before Congress that his FBI team was removed from Abu Zubaydah's interrogation multiple times, only to be asked to return when the harsher interrogation tactics of the CIA proved unsuccessful. [12] Ali Soufan was alarmed by the early CIA tactics, such as enforced nudity, cold temperatures, and blaring loud rock music in Zubaydah's cell. [4] [6] Soufan reported to his FBI superiors that the CIA's interrogation constituted "borderline torture." [8] He was particularly concerned about a coffin-like box he discovered that had been built by the CIA interrogation team. [6] He was so angry that he called the FBI assistant director for counterterrorism, Pasquale D'Amaro, and shouted, "I swear to God, I'm going to arrest these guys!" [4] [6] Afterward, both FBI agents were ordered to leave the facility by FBI Director Robert Mueller. [6] [8] [13] Ali Soufan left, but Steve Gaudin stayed an additional few weeks and continued to participate in the interrogation. [8]
Ali Soufan states that traditional, rapport-building interrogation methods worked on Abu Zubaydah. Therefore, according to Soufan, harsher interrogation tactics were unnecessary to obtain actionable intelligence. [6] [12] [13] He alleges that the claim Abu Zubaydah only revealed actionable intelligence after the harsher interrogation techniques were applied is incorrect. [6] [12] [13] "I was in the middle of this, and it's not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective," Soufan said in a Newsweek interview. [6] "We were able to get the information about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a couple of days. We didn't have to do any of this [torture]. We could have done this the right way." [6]
Other intelligence officials also have disputed the need for harsher interrogation techniques. [14] [15] Rohan Gunaratna, an al-Qaeda expert and a government witness in the José Padilla case, said that "most of the information that was exceptionally useful to the fight against al-Qaeda came from Abu Zubaydah, and it came before the U.S. government decided to use enhanced techniques." [15] In addition, Dan Coleman, a retired FBI official and al-Qaeda expert, commented that after the CIA's use of coercive methods, "I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted. He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much." [9]
Ali Soufan wrote in a New York Times opinion piece about his experience interrogating Abu Zubaydah:
Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence. We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives. ... Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh's capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don't add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May. [13]
The CIA interrogation strategies were based on work done by James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in the Air Force's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program. [4] [16] [17] [18] [19] The CIA contracted with the two psychologists to develop alternative, harsher interrogation techniques than those allowed at the time. [4] [16] [17] [18] [20] Neither of the two psychologists had any experience in conducting interrogations. [17] [18] [20] [21]
The SERE program was originally designed as defensive in nature and was used to train American pilots and other soldiers how to resist harsh interrogation techniques and torture if they fell into enemy hands. [4] [18] The program subjected U.S. military trainees to techniques such as "waterboarding ... sleep deprivation, isolation, exposure to extreme temperatures, enclosure in tiny spaces, bombardment with agonizing sounds at extremely damaging decibel levels, and religious and sexual humiliation." [22] For the CIA, Mitchell and Jessen adapted SERE into an offensive program designed to train CIA agents and contractors on how to use the harsh interrogation techniques or torture to get information from prisoners. [4] [16] [18] All of the tactics listed above were later reported by the International Committee of the Red Cross as having been used on Abu Zubaydah. [23] [24]
Mitchell and Jessen relied heavily on experiments done by the American psychologist Martin Seligman in the 1970s known as "learned helplessness." [11] In these experiments, caged dogs were shocked with electricity in a random way in order to completely break their will to resist. [11] Mitchell believed that Zubaydah must be treated "like a dog in a cage." [4] He said the interrogation "was like an experiment, when you apply electric shocks to a caged dog, after a while, he's so diminished, he can't resist." [4]
According to a report in 2008 by the New York Times, information was not gotten during the torture. Rather, a period of a day or more passed before a non-coercive, trust-building interrogation was started by someone who did not use the harsh methods. CIA employee Deuce Martinez was this interrogator for Zubaydah. [25]
Once Abu Zubaydah was transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2006, he refused to cooperate with FBI interrogators, who were attempting to build cases against the "high-value detainees" untainted by allegations of torture. [14]
In 2007, John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer who was part of the team that captured Abu Zubaydah, said in an interview with ABC News that Zubaybah broke after 35 seconds of his first waterboarding session. [26] However, in his book published in 2010, Kiriakou acknowledged he was not present and had no direct knowledge of Abu Zubaydah's CIA interrogations at the Thailand black site. [27]
During his CIA interrogation, Abu Zubaydah began to offer many names of supposed terrorist and allegations of various al Qaeda plots. However, the Washington Post reported in 2009 that "not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations." [14] A former intelligence official stated "[w]e spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms." [28] Ron Suskind said, "we tortured an insane man and ran screaming at every word he uttered." [29]
Abu Zubaydah says he lied under interrogation to prevent further torture. [30]
Some of the various false leads he provided are the following:
Ali Soufan testified about Abu Zubaydah's interrogation before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary on May 13, 2009. In his testimony he stated:
The case of the terrorist Abu Zubaydah is a good example of where the success of the Informed Interrogation Approach can be contrasted with the failure of the harsh technique approach. I have to restrict my remarks to what has been unclassified. (I will note that there is documented evidence supporting everything I will tell you today.) Immediately after Abu Zubaydah was captured, a fellow FBI agent and I were flown to meet him at an undisclosed location. We were both very familiar with Abu Zubaydah and have successfully interrogated al-Qaeda terrorists. We started interrogating him, supported by CIA officials who were stationed at the location, and within the first hour of the interrogation, using the Informed Interrogation Approach, we gained important actionable intelligence. The information was so important that, as I later learned from open sources, it went to CIA Director George Tennet who was so impressed that he initially ordered us to be congratulated. That was apparently quickly withdrawn as soon as Mr. Tennet was told that it was FBI agents, who were responsible. He then immediately ordered a CIA CTC interrogation team to leave DC and head to the location to take over from us. During his capture Abu Zubaydah had been injured. After seeing the extent of his injuries, the CIA medical team supporting us decided they were not equipped to treat him and we had to take him to a hospital or he would die. At the hospital, we continued our questioning as much as possible, while taking into account his medical condition and the need to know all information he might have on existing threats. We were once again very successful and elicited information regarding the role of KSM as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and lots of other information that remains classified. (It is important to remember that before this we had no idea of KSM's role in 9/11 or his importance in the al Qaeda leadership structure.) All this happened before the CTC team arrived. A few days after we started questioning Abu Zubaydah, the CTC interrogation team finally arrived from DC with a contractor who was instructing them on how they should conduct the interrogations, and we were removed. Immediately, on the instructions of the contractor, harsh techniques were introduced, starting with nudity. (The harsher techniques mentioned in the memos were not introduced or even discussed at this point.) The new techniques did not produce results as Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking. At that time nudity and low-level sleep deprivation (between 24 and 48 hours) was being used. After a few days of getting no information, and after repeated inquiries from DC asking why all of sudden no information was being transmitted (when before there had been a steady stream), we again were given control of the interrogation. We then returned to using the Informed Interrogation Approach. Within a few hours, Abu Zubaydah again started talking and gave us important actionable intelligence. This included the details of Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber." To remind you of how important this information was viewed at the time, the then-Attorney General, John Ashcroft, held a press conference from Moscow to discuss the news. Other important actionable intelligence was also gained that remains classified. [12]
Soon after the time of Abu Zubaydah's capture in March 2002, the CIA began videotaping him at all times. Hundreds of hours of video on 92 tapes were eventually produced. [9] The CIA stopped taping in late 2002, after Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded. [38] Originally the CIA claimed it taped the interrogations to protect agents from a wrongful death suit if Abu Zubaydah happened to succumb to the injuries he suffered during his capture. [38]
The tapes were destroyed on November 9, 2005. [39] When this became public in 2007, the CIA Director at that time, Michael Hayden, asserted that the continued existence of the tapes had represented a risk to the CIA personnel involved. [40] He asserted that if the tapes had been leaked, they might cause the CIA personnel to be identified and targeted for retaliation. [41]
In December 2019, The New York Times published an article in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting which was based upon drawings made by Zubaydah, showing how he was tortured in "vivid and disturbing ways". The article includes some of the drawings as well as a link to a 61-page report, [42] as well as asserts that Zubaydah was never a member of Al Qaeda. In the article Zubaydah gives gruesome details of numerous types of torture including being locked up inside a small box called "the dog box" for "countless hours," which caused muscle contractions. "The very strong pain," he said, "made me scream unconsciously." [43]
Abu Zubaydah is a Palestinian citizen born in Saudi Arabia currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was a Libyan national captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 after the fall of the Taliban; he was interrogated by American and Egyptian forces. The information he gave under torture to Egyptian authorities was cited by the George W. Bush administration in the months preceding its 2003 invasion of Iraq as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. That information was frequently repeated by members of the Bush administration, although reports from both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) strongly questioned its credibility, suggesting that al-Libi was "intentionally misleading" interrogators.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, often known by his initials KSM, is a Pakistani terrorist, mechanical engineer and the former Head of Propaganda for al-Qaeda. He is currently held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges. He was named as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" in the 2004 9/11 Commission Report.
Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboarding, the captive's face is covered with cloth or some other thin material and immobilized on their back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees. Torturers pour water onto the face over the breathing passages, causing an almost immediate gag reflex and creating a drowning sensation for the captive. Normally, water is poured intermittently to prevent death; however, if the water is poured uninterruptedly it will lead to death by asphyxia. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, and lasting psychological damage. Adverse physical effects can last for months, and psychological effects for years. The term "water board torture" appeared in press reports as early as 1976.
Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Abdu al-Nashiri is a Saudi Arabian citizen alleged to be the mastermind of the bombing of USS Cole and other maritime attacks. He is alleged to have headed al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf states prior to his capture in November 2002 by the CIA's Special Activities Division.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
Mohammed Farik Bin Amin, alias Zubair Zaid, is a Malaysian who is alleged to be a senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah and al Qaeda. He is currently in American custody in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He is one of the 14 detainees who had previously been held for years at CIA black sites. In the ODNI biographies of those 14, Amin is described as a direct subordinate of Hambali. Farik Amin is also a cousin of well-known Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Abdhir.
Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. is an American former intelligence officer who served as Director of the National Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was the final CIA deputy director for operations (DDO) before that position was expanded to D/NCS in December 2004. Rodriguez was a central figure in the 2005 CIA interrogation videotapes destruction, leading to The New York Times Editorial Board and Human Rights Watch to call for his prosecution.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Bucharest, and Guantanamo Bay—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white room torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
John Chris Kiriakou is an American author, journalist and former intelligence officer. Kiriakou is a columnist with Reader Supported News and co-host of Political Misfits on Sputnik Radio.
The CIA interrogation videotapes destruction occurred on November 9, 2005. The videotapes were made by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during interrogations of Al-Qaeda suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002 at a CIA black site prison in Thailand. Ninety tapes were made of Zubaydah and two of al-Nashiri. Twelve tapes depict interrogations using "enhanced interrogation techniques", a euphemism for torture. The tapes and their destruction became public knowledge in December 2007. A criminal investigation by a Department of Justice special prosecutor, John Durham, decided in 2010 to not file any criminal charges related to destroying the videotapes.
This article deals with the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the federal government of the United States that constitute violations of human rights.
Deuce Martinez is an American intelligence professional. "Deuce" is not his given first name, but a nickname that was used in the first newspaper article naming him. He was involved at the start of the Central Intelligence Agency's Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program of "high-value detainees," including Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Ali H. Soufan is a Lebanese-American former FBI agent who was involved in a number of high-profile anti-terrorism cases both in the United States and around the world. A 2006 New Yorker article described Soufan as coming closer than anyone to preventing the September 11 attacks and implied that he would have succeeded had the CIA been willing to share information with him. He resigned from the FBI in 2005 after publicly chastising the CIA for not sharing intelligence with him which could have prevented the attacks.
Noor al-Deen is a citizen of Syria wounded when he was captured by counter-terrorism officials at a raid on a "Faisalabad safe house" when Abu Zubaydah was captured. According to the Washington Post Noor al-Deen, like Abu Zubaydah, was sent to Morocco by the CIA, so he too could be subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques"
James Elmer Mitchell is an American psychologist and former member of the United States Air Force. From 2002, after his retirement from the military, to 2009, his company Mitchell Jessen and Associates received $81 million on contract from the CIA to carry out the torture of detainees, referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques" that resulted in little credible information.
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The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program is a report compiled by the bipartisan United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Detention and Interrogation Program and its use of torture during interrogation in U.S. government communiqués on detainees in CIA custody. The report covers CIA activities before, during, and after the "War on Terror". The initial report was approved on December 13, 2012, by a vote of 9–6, with seven Democrats, one Independent, and one Republican voting in favor of the report and six Republicans voting in opposition.
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Following the September 11 attacks of 2001 and subsequent War on Terror, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) established a "Detention and Interrogation Program" that included a network of clandestine extrajudicial detention centers, officially known as "black sites", to detain, interrogate, and often torture suspected enemy combatants, usually with the acquiescence, if not direct collaboration, of the host government.