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".
