Torture against Terror; What’s Worse?

The CIA are the biggest intelligence agency in the world. Recently, it has come to public attention that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the CIA were less than humane in their approach to catching the people responsible.

Their interrogation techniques towards members off al-Qaeda have been described as ‘brutal’ and ‘criminal.’ After going through six million pages of documents regarding the interrogations, a 500 page report has been published. The authors of this report have concluded that in none of the cases that had been examined, had the use of torture stopped a terrorist attack. Not only has this result severely damaged America’s but has also placed the country in a difficult position when it comes to criticising how other countries run their affairs. Can America now say that dictatorial regimes are unjust? Can terrorists now justify their crimes by highlighting the abuse from the Americans?

Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, introduced the report to the Senate, describing the CIA’s actions as a ‘stain on US history’. 

"The release of this 500-page summary cannot remove that stain, but it can and does say to our people and the world that America is big enough to admit when it's wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes," she said. "Under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured," she added.

President Barrack Obama said; ‘These techniques did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners.’

Senate Republican leaders insisted that these methods had helped in the capture of important suspects and eventually the killing of Osama bin Laden. Senators Mitch McConnell and Saxby Chambliss released a joint statement saying that ‘Claims included in this report that assert the contrary are simply wrong.’

British Prime Minister David Cameron stated that the issue had been ‘dealt with from a British perspective’ but that torture ultimately was wrong. ‘After 9/11 there were things that happened that were wrong – and we should be clear about the fact they were wrong.’

The main points of the report include the following;

-          None of the 20 cases of counterterrorism ‘successes’ attributed to the techniques led to unique or otherwise unavailable intelligence

-          The CIA misled politicians and public, giving inaccurate information to obtain approval for using techniques

-          The CIA claimed falsely that no senators had objected to the programme

-          At least 26 of 119 known detainees in custody during the life of the programme were wrongfully held, and many held for months longer than they should have been

-          Methods included sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours, waterboarding, beating, ‘rectal hydration’ and in some particular cases detainees were kept alive through ‘rectal feeding’ which medical experts have reported has no medical benefits

-          Waterboarding was physically harmful to prisoners, causing convulsions and vomiting

The CIA and other US Intelligence Agencies were accused of using ‘extraordinary rendition’ to send terror suspects for questioning in countries where they were under no legal protection or rights where American law was concerned. Some suspects also claimed that they had been tortured in countries such as Syria and Egypt.

 UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism Ben Emmerson said that senior officials from the administration of George W Bush who planned and sanctioned crimes must be prosecuted, as well as CIA and US government officials responsible for torture such as waterboarding.

"As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice," Mr Emmerson said. “The US attorney general is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges against those responsible.”

Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said that 

“the CIA's actions are criminal "and can never be justified".

"Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of officials, torture will remain a 'policy option' for future presidents," he said.

Mr Obama said on Tuesday that he hoped that the publication of the report would not lead to a re-fight of old arguments, but "help us leave these techniques where they belong - in the past". Republican Senator John McCain argued that torture "rarely yields credible information" and that even in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden the most important lead came from "conventional interrogation methods".

The CIA has argued that the interrogations had helped save lives.

"The intelligence gained from the programme was critical to our understanding of al-Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day," director John Brennan said.

Poland's former president has publicly acknowledged for the first time his country hosted a secret CIA prison.

Aleksander Kwasniewski said that he put pressure on the US to end brutal interrogations at the prison in 2003.

"I told Bush that this cooperation must end and it did end," Mr Kwasniewski told local media.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius called on the US to say whether CIA used his country to interrogate prisoners.

A previous Lithuanian investigation found the CIA set up and ran a facility near the country's capital but could not determine if prisoners were held there.

And Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani called the report "shocking", saying the actions "violated all accepted norms of human rights in the world".