Ex-C.I.A. Psychologist Re-enacts Interrogation Techniques for Guantnamo Court [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/politics/cia-torture-guantanamo-saudi-detainee-nashiri.html

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https://archive.is/6V3fo


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Dr. Jessen said he imposed safeguards on the techniques he and his waterboarding partner, James E. Mitchell, employed, including having other psychologists monitor the interrogations to essentially make sure they were doing no harm.

Mr. Nashiri was waterboarded multiple times before interrogators abandoned the technique on him. The detainee, who is 5-foot-5, kept slipping from his straps — the “safety equipment” on the board that was built for the first person the interrogators had waterboarded, Abu Zubaydah, who was 5-foot-10.

But Dr. Jessen also acknowledged that “unfortunate things” happened to the prisoner when he was not observing the interrogations. Dr. Jessen later learned, he said, that Mr. Nashiri was held with arms strung up over his head, chained to a wall and sodomized.

An internal investigation also showed that a C.I.A. interrogator simulated Russian roulette. A drill was revved next to Mr. Nashiri’s hooded head. Dr. Mitchell has testified that guards bent him over backward, a broomstick behind his knees, leaving Mr. Nashiri howling in pain.

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