- CIA seal in Old Headquarters Building; Source: Wikimedia Commons
The report details the cooperation between Libyan leader al-Gaddafi and the CIA as well as Britain’s agencies MI5 and MI6 between 2003 and the beginning of the Libyan revolution in 2011. One of the interviewed former detainees said he was waterboarded while another described similar techniques used on him in a secret prison in Afghanistan. These accounts contradict the position of US intelligence officials that only three high-level terrorism suspects were subjected to waterboarding, a torture practice banned by President Barack Obama in 2009.
Other detainees were allegedly chained to walls, being left in dark cells for weeks and months in diapers, being forced into stressful positions and being subjected to continous, loud music.
According to Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor at HRW and author of the report, the US did “not only deliver Gaddafi his enemies on a silver platter but it seems that the CIA tortured many of them first”. The report comes shortly after a US judge has closed the only investigation into alleged abuses in CIA custody without anyone criminally charged.
Reuters: Human rights group alleges U.S. waterboarded Gaddafi opponents
NY Times: Libyan Alleges Waterboarding by C.I.A., Report Says
