Waterboarding

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As waterboarding one will torture the simulated be drowned referred. Using the gag reflex, the victim physiologically creates the impression of imminent drowning by placing a cloth over the mouth and nose, which is constantly doused with water , greatly increasing the breathing resistance . Fixing the torture victim in a position where the head is lower than the rest of the body is designed to prevent water from entering the lungs and subsequent actual drowning. Waterboarding is perceived as a trauma . Depending on the general psychological stability of the victim, severe to irreversible trauma-reactive illnesses can occur.

Waterboarding is one of the torture methods that usually leave no physical traces ( white torture ), but can lead to long-term or permanent mental disorders. Subsequent evidence on the tortured person himself is therefore rarely available in the case of waterboarding.

Original reports claimed that most victims' resistance would break in less than a minute. This was misinformation that was passed on to the media by the CIA - in fact, waterboarding was e.g. B. Used at Abu Zubaydah 83 times.

history

Forcing large amounts of water into the mouth and nose with the risk of entering the trachea and lungs with subsequent drowning has been proven to be a frequent method of execution and torture. Waterboarding in the technical definition of the CIA differs from it on the one hand by a cloth or cellophane over the mouth and nose, through which the effect is not the penetration of water into the respiratory organs, but the increased breathing resistance and the resulting gag reflex, and on the other hand the board (board) on which the person is fixed with the head lower than the rest of the body. These two characteristics can be traced through the history of torture.

The oldest evidence for the use of a cloth over the mouth and nose is available under the name tormento de toca for the Spanish Inquisition . The Spaniards are said to have brought the method to their colonies in South-East Asia , particularly the Philippines .

The use by Japanese soldiers in World War II has been proven by a court . In a war crimes trial following the Tokyo trials , a Japanese officer was sentenced by an American court martial in 1947 to 15 years of hard labor for torture. His victims were tied to an overturned stretcher with their feet up. In this position, water was poured over their bare faces.

Waterboarding frame in the Tuol Sleng Museum , Cambodia

During the Algerian war , the French army tortured in accordance with French doctrine and used the technique of “ hiding to the brink of drowning” (Scholl-Latour) against political prisoners . The French-Algerian journalist Henri Alleg reported in his 1958 book La Question on the method to which he himself was exposed. He was placed over a board, his head was wrapped in a piece of clothing, and water was run over him so that it entered his mouth and nose and made him feel like he was drowning. Some of the French officers were tortured in this way by the Gestapo themselves during World War II . The Resistance gave it the name baignoire ('bathtub').

In 1968 the front page of the Washington Post caused a sensation, on which the photo of US soldiers in the Vietnam War was shown, one of whom poured water over the face of a prisoner of war lying on the ground . The perpetrator was brought to a court martial and dishonorably discharged from the army.

In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge regularly used waterboarding methods during the civil war in Cambodia . Their torture centers were equipped with fixed frames for handcuffing prisoners with low heads.

In 1983 a Texas court sentenced a sheriff to four years in prison for interrogating a suspect by waterboarding a suspect with a scarf over his face.

Use of waterboarding by the USA after 2001

Protest against waterboarding during a visit to Condoleezza Rice in Iceland in May 2008

As a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , US President George W. Bush authorized the CIA for the first time on September 17, 2001 to detain and question prisoners. After the CIA had previously used illegal, violent interrogation methods, a formal program of enhanced interrogation techniques was developed by the CIA in August 2002 . It consisted of various torture methods. Waterboarding was the most extensive of the known forms of torture. It had to be allowed individually for each prisoner.

The CIA as a user of these practices also defined them. In doing so, she adopted an “unusually narrow and legally questionable definition of torture” from the US Department of Justice from 2002. This narrow, technical definition is controversial. The US media and experts do not share it and place it in a wider context of torture methods of the combined use of water and shortness of breath to create fear of death. Based on the CIA definition, waterboarding has been approved as generally acceptable by the United States Department of Justice . The Justice Department's opinion is not publicly available, but its section is cited in a 2004 CIA document that was released in 2009.

"[10.] The application of the waterboard technique involves binding the detainee to a bench with his feet elevated above his head. The detainee's head is immobilized and an interrogator places a cloth over the detainee's mouth and nose while pouring water onto the cloth in a controlled manner. Airflow is restricted for 20 to 40 seconds and the technique produces the sensation of drowning and suffocation. "

“[10.] To use waterboarding, the prisoner is tied to a bench in such a way that his feet are raised above his head. The prisoner's head is immobilized; and an interrogator places a cloth over the prisoner's mouth and nose while he controls pouring water on the cloth. Breathing is stopped for 20 to 40 seconds; and the method creates the feeling of drowning and suffocation. "

- CIA OIG: Special Review 2007, p. 15

The most detailed description of waterboarding by the CIA comes from a 2007 report by the ICRC based on interviews with prisoners in Guantanamo in late 2006.

“In each case, the person to be suffocated was strapped to a tilting bed and a cloth was placed over the face, covering the nose and mouth. Water was then poured continuously onto the cloth, saturating it and blocking off any air so that the person could not breathe. This form of suffocation induced a feeling of panic and the acute impression that the person was about to die. In at least one case, this was accompanied by incontinence of the urine. At a point chosen by the interrogator the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into a head-up and vertical position so that the person was left hanging by the straps used to secure him to the bed. The procedure was repeated at least twice, if not more often, during a single interrogation session. Moreover, this repetitive suffocation was inflicted on the detainees during subsequent sessions. The above procedure is the so-called 'water boarding' technique. "

“In each of the cases, the person to be suffocated was tied to a tilted bed and a sheet was placed over their face, covering their nose and mouth. Water was then continuously poured onto the cloth until it was soaked and the air supply stopped so that the person could not breathe. This type of suffocation creates a sense of panic and an immediate impression that the person is dying. In at least one case, this was accompanied by incontinence of the bladder. The interrogator chooses when to remove the sheet and tilt the bed so that the head is up and the person hangs on the bed in the shackles. This procedure was repeated at least twice during an interrogation session. In addition, this multiple suffocation of prisoners was used during the subsequent sessions. The above procedure is the so-called waterboarding method. "

- ICRC 2007, p. 10

According to information from CIA director Michael Hayden, the method was used against the three alleged al-Qaida members of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed , Abu Subaida and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri . The CIA brought in the two psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. As an instructor in SERE training for the American Air Force, you had experience with torture methods, because the aim is to prepare soldiers for situations that they could get into as prisoners of war if the enemy does not comply with the Geneva Conventions . However, the psychologists had neither training nor experience in interrogation techniques, no knowledge of counter-terrorism or background information on al-Qaeda.

With several prisoners, waterboarding was used differently from the form originating from the SERE training and approved for the CIA. In one case of Chalid Sheikh Mohammed, waterboarding was modified so that the interrogator with his hands in front of the prisoner's mouth and nose dammed the water up to a height of about 2.5 cm. This turned a method that physiologically relies on increased breathing resistance due to the wet cloth into an actual drowning.

The discovery of this practice further fueled the already ongoing public debate as to whether the Bush administration might accept violations of human rights and the Geneva Convention to prevent new terrorist attacks after September 11th . In connection with waterboarding, a government spokesman said the US government saw it as an acceptable prisoner interrogation method because it was not a torture method.

In autumn 2014 it became known that the water torture of at least two suspects was being extended and that the heads of the victims were kept completely under water in a tub until they actually threatened to suffocate.

The short version of the Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence , which was drawn up from 2009 to 2013, was only published in December 2014 . This revealed details of the torture of CIA prisoners, including through waterboarding. Accordingly, the victims suffered significantly more serious medical consequences: Abu Zubaydah was diagnosed with a "reduction in vital functions ", with "bubbles rising from his open, water-filled mouth". With Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the torture developed until he "almost drowned several times in a row".

Aside from the three people who were known to have been tortured by waterboarding, the Senate report contains indications that other prisoners have been subjected to waterboarding. In addition, prisoners made statements that they had been tortured using methods that were comparable or indistinguishable from waterboarding. Waterboarding was used on two prisoners at a black site in Bangkok , Thailand, and another in Stare Kiejkuty , Poland, near Szymany Airport . The Senate report also includes information that another CIA prison in Bagram , Afghanistan, had a waterboard and was photographed with accessories, although there is no information that waterboarding was used at that facility.

US authorities and their reactions to criticism

The US government justified the detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base detention center by saying that it did not consider them prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention , and claimed that only three people were subjected to waterboarding. However, Joyce Hens Green , a judge in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, in her January 31, 2005 judgment ruled the practice unlawful.

In June 2006, the decision Supreme Court of the United States in the process Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, among other things, that the Geneva Conventions would also apply to the prisoners in Guantanamo . Vice President Dick Cheney caused a stir in 2006 when he reaffirmed the practice of torture and, when asked by an American radio reporter whether he thought the criticism was rather stupid in view of the danger it faced, agreed to it.

As a result of global public criticism - according to ABC News, which referred to unverifiable information from government officials - the American government in 2006 or 2007 removed waterboarding from the list of interrogation techniques approved after September 11, 2001. At the top of the official list, waterboarding has now been replaced by longtime standing (40 hours tied up and sleep deprived). ABC News quoted Republican Senator John McCain in this regard, who had qualified waterboarding as a mock execution.

At the beginning of October 2007, however, a secret paper from the Ministry of Justice on the CIA interrogation methods became public, in which waterboarding was still assessed as compliant with the law, i.e. as applicable.

Presidential veto

In December 2007 that brought Republicans in the Senate a legislative initiative to ban controversial interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, with reference to a formal error basis. President Bush had previously announced that he would veto if the bill were passed , and did so after the bill was passed by Congress in early March 2008. He argued that such a bill would make America “one of the most useful tools in the fight against the terror ”. The attempt by the Democrats to override the presidential veto by a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives failed.

Influencing the debate was an article by writer and columnist Christopher Hitchens , entitled Believe me, It's Torture , in the American magazine Vanity Fair in August 2008, for which he exposed himself to waterboarding.

Barack Obama administration

Immediately after the end of George W. Bush's term of office, the future US President Barack Obama ordered a ban on waterboarding and other torture practices labeled harsh interrogation on January 22, 2009 . Since then, when interrogating suspected terrorists, employees of the CIA have also been obliged to comply with the martial law codified in the US Army's field manual for interrogating enemy prisoners of war.

As early as September 15, 2007, the then CIA boss Michael Hayden, on the recommendation of his deputy Steve Kappes, ordered members of the CIA to ban waterboarding. CIA video recordings of interrogations from 2002 had already been destroyed on instructions from Hayden in 2005 - according to Hayden, in order to protect the secret service officers employed in the proceedings from possible acts of revenge. Civil rights activists suspect behind this, however, the destruction of legally incriminating evidence. In the meantime, CIA chief Hayden has publicly admitted that the American secret service used the controversial interrogation method of waterboarding around 2003 in three cases, namely with Chalid Sheikh Mohammed , Abu Zubaydah and Abdel Rahim el-Nashiri . In September 2012, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch published further cases of waterboarding by US intelligence agencies, this time in 2004 against Libyan citizens. The men tortured in this way had belonged to the resistance against the Libyan Muammar al-Gaddafi regime, had fled to Afghanistan, where they were kidnapped by Western secret services and taken to Libyan prisons.

In a speech in Washington, DC in early March 2009, US Attorney General Eric Holder described the method of waterboarding as torture: "Waterboarding is torture and must not be used by the United States under any circumstances." Holder also had the legal memoranda of the Bush administration published Written by senior government officials including Dick Cheney , David S. Addington , Jay Bybee, and Steven G. Bradbury and John Yoo ( Office of Legal Council ), it served as the legal basis for waterboarding. Nevertheless, US President Obama decided that the CIA staff who used this torture method when interrogating terrorist suspects and who carried out their duties in good faith according to the legal requirements of the Justice Department, [...] would not be subject to prosecution.

Former President Bush revealed in his memoir ( Decision Points , published November 9, 2010 in English), among other things, that he personally approved torture in the war on terror . Amnesty International then called for an investigation into Bush.

Evaluation of the results

According to media reports, in an internal report in 2009, the CIA concluded that its interrogation and detention program, including the use of waterboarding and other torture methods, had not provided much informational value. This is countered by a paper in which CIA Director John O. Brennan outlined in mid-2013 the great importance of extraordinary extraditions ( Extraordinary rendition ), secret prisons ( black sites ) and enhanced interrogation.

A working group of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence , the Senate committee responsible for overseeing US intelligence, investigated confidential and classified CIA records until 2013. The employees of the US Parliament did not find any significant intelligence information of the CIA program and found that the intelligence service both the Congress and the public have repeatedly misled about the value of the programs and methods.

In the CIA the management and the internal supervisory departments were fully informed, at the political level Vice President Dick Cheney had a full overview, President Bush and the National Security Council were regularly informed and decided on the scope of the program. The chairmen of the two intelligence committees in Congress, the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence , were informed about key issues, and the CIA deliberately made incorrect and incomplete statements to the full committees. Due to confidentiality regulations, the chairmen of the committees only had limited opportunities to inform the other members of the committees, the chairmen of the two chambers of parliament and the public. Both the CIA and the White House withheld relevant information from the US Department of Justice. The International Committee of the Red Cross only got access to the detainees after they had been handed over to the Ministry of Defense and detained in Guantanamo. Both those directly responsible and the press offices acted on the media over the entire period, spreading open lies and manipulated information.

The investigations showed that, contrary to the systematic and repeated statements of the CIA and the political level, waterboarding and other torture did not provide any new information that could be used operationally for the counter-terrorism, nor did they confirm essential information obtained from other sources during the entire program. All statements that the program had achieved successes that would have been impossible any other way were wrong.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Waterboarding  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Waterboarding  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ US Department of Justice, Office of the Legal Counsel: Memorandum for John Rizzo, Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency, August 1, 2002 (PDF; 2.0 MB), pp. 3 f., 11, 15 (copy in the archives of the Federation of American Scientists ).
  2. ↑ CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described. ABC News, accessed November 18, 2005 .
  3. ↑ a b c Approved by the White House. n-tv, accessed December 11, 2007 .
  4. ^ New York Times: Ex-Officer Is First From CIA to Face Prison for a Leak , January 5, 2013.
  5. ↑ ABC : History of an Interogation Technique , November 29, 2005, accessed February 26, 2009.
  6. ↑ a b c NPR : Waterboarding - A Tortured History. November 3, 2007, accessed February 26, 2009.
  7. ^ Washington Post : Waterboarding Historically Controversial. October 5, 2006, accessed February 26, 2009.
  8. ↑ Peter Scholl-Latour : Arabia's moment of truth. Ullstein, 2012, ISBN 978-3-548-37467-3 , p. 240.
  9. ^ The Independent : Waterboarding is torture , November 1, 2007, accessed February 26, 2009.
  10. ↑ Peter Scholl-Latour : Arabia's moment of truth. Ullstein, 2012, ISBN 978-3-548-37467-3 , p. 240.
  11. ↑ The photo online at the Washington Post
  12. ↑ ABC : History of an Interogation Technique , November 29, 2005, accessed February 26, 2009.
  13. ↑ BBC : Washington Diary: Water Torture. December 12, 2007, accessed February 26, 2009.
  14. ^ Brian Duignan (ed.): The Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Purpose, Process, and People. New York 2009, p. 331.
  15. ^ Washington Post : Waterboarding Historically Controversial. October 5, 2006, accessed February 26, 2009.
  16. ^ The Independent : Waterboarding is torture , November 1, 2007, accessed February 26, 2009.
  17. ↑ ABC : History of an Interogation Technique , November 29, 2005, accessed February 26, 2009.
  18. ^ Brian Duignan (ed.): The Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Purpose, Process, and People. New York 2009.
  19. ↑ CIA Office of Inspector General: Special Review Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities. ( Memento of December 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) September 2001-October 2003, May 7, 2004, copy on the ALCU website .
  20. ↑ ICRC: ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody ( Memento of December 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), 2007, Section 1.3.1. Suffocation by Water.
  21. ↑ Guardian: CIA admit 'waterboarding' al-Qaida suspects. February 5, 2008.
  22. ↑ SSCI study 2014, p. 9.
  23. ↑ SSCI study 2014, p. 11.
  24. ↑ SSCI study 2014, p. 88.
  25. ↑ Soviet-Style “Torture” Becomes “Interrogation”. New York Times, accessed June 3, 2007 .
  26. ↑ The White House approved “waterboarding”. NetZeitung, archived from the original on May 21, 2007 ; Retrieved December 11, 2007 .
  27. ↑ CIA tortured al Qaed suspects close to the point of death by drowning them in water-filled baths. Telegraph, September 7, 2014.
  28. ↑ SSCI study 2014, p. 3.
  29. ↑ SSCI study 2014, pp. 106-108.
  30. ↑ SSCI study 2014, p. 107.
  31. ↑ a b c Exclusive: Only Three Have Been Waterboarded by CIA ( Memento of December 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), abc News, December 17, 2007.
  32. ^ Judgment. (PDF; 3.3 MB) US District Court For The District Of Columbia, accessed January 31, 2005 .
  33. ↑ Cheney endorses simulated drowning. Financial Times, accessed October 26, 2006 .
  34. ↑ a b US secret service CIA prohibits interrogation methods of the "water cure". AFP, archived from the original on December 13, 2007 ; Retrieved September 15, 2007 .
  35. ^ Secret US Endorsement of Severe Interrogations. New York Times, accessed October 4, 2007 .
  36. ↑ a b "Waterboarding" ban in the Senate failed. Die Welt, accessed December 15, 2007 .
  37. ↑ Bush stops anti-torture law. Focus, accessed March 8, 2008 .
  38. ^ New York Times: Effort to Prohibit Waterboarding Fails in House. March 12, 2008.
  39. ↑ See: William Shawcross: Justice and the Enemy: From the Nuremberg Trials to Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. PublicAffairs, 2012, ISBN 978-1-58648-975-5 , p. 79 and the obituaries for Hitchens, such as the daily newspaper: On the death of Christopher Hitchens: He just knew better. December 16, 2011 and Süddeutsche Zeitung: On the death of Christopher Hitchens: Devil's lawyer. December 16, 2011.
  40. ↑ Christopher Hitchens: Believe me, It's Torture. Vanity Fair, August 2008.
  41. ↑ Election promise redeemed: Obama orders the closure of Guantánamo. FAZ, accessed on January 22, 2009 .
  42. ^ CIA admits use of waterboarding. Spiegel Online, accessed February 5, 2008 .
  43. ↑ Laura Pitter: Delivered Into Enemy Hands. US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi's Libya. ISBN 1-56432-940-2 , PDF.
  44. ^ New York Times: Holder Tells Senators Waterboarding Is Torture. January 15, 2009.
  45. ^ Marlise Simons: Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on Torture for 6 Bush-Era Officials. In: nytimes.com. March 28, 2009.
  46. ↑ Jane Mayer: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. 2008, Doubleday-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-385-52639-5 , is considered an outstanding book about the events in Abu Ghraib and on Guantanamo .
  47. ↑ a b On the dark side. Who is Politically Responsible for Torture by CIA Members? Berliner Zeitung, accessed on April 22, 2009 .
  48. ^ ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody. (PDF; 167 kB) New York Times / International Committee of the Red Cross, accessed on April 22, 2009 .
  49. ↑ Bush defends Iraq war. In: Focus.de. November 9, 2010.
  50. ↑ Monument to a figure of hatred. In: spiegel.de. November 9, 2010.
  51. ↑ Schröder's ex-spokesman blasphemed Bush's intelligence. In: Handelsblatt.com. November 10, 2010.
  52. ↑ a b CIA draws scrutiny over searching Senate panel's computers for interrogation report. In: washingtonpost.com. 5th March 2014.