Guantnamo detainee to testify on 'unspeakable torture' by CIA agents [View all]

[Solly Mack]

Abu Zubaydah, the Guantánamo detainee who endured some of the most brutal CIA interrogation techniques in the post-9/11 era including waterboarding, has waived his immunity in order to testify at an upcoming hearing at which he will seek to expose “the unspeakable torture of an innocent man”.


Zubaydah lost an eye while being held captive by the CIA in Thailand, at a time when he underwent extreme “enhanced interrogation” techniques that have been denounced as torture. His interrogators pushed him so hard, including sleep deprivation and physical abuse, that at one point they feared he might die, and sent a cable instructing CIA bosses that if he died in the course of an interrogation he should be cremated immediately.

In a separate cable to CIA headquarters, interrogators said that if he survived the experience they should be protected from recriminations by ensuring that he was “in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life”.

The CIA claimed that Zubaydah was the third highest-ranking member of al-Qaida and that he had been involved in “every major terrorist operation carried out by al-Qaida”. But those descriptions of him were later debunked, and he was found to have been a relatively lowly operative.

It's not in me to forget. I can't. I won't.