Torturing developmentally challenged man to gain “leverage”

Buried in the U.S. Senate’s scathing report on CIA torture—in footnote 32 on page 43 of the heavily redacted 528-page “summary”—is this chilling detail:

Twenty-six of the 119 people subjected to torture by the CIA turned out to be guilty of nothing. These were cases of mistaken identity, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc. One such wrongfully held prisoner was Nazar Ali, an intellectually challenged man who was never even suspected of involvement in terrorism. He was imprisoned and tortured only so his “taped crying” could be “used as leverage against a family member.”

nazar ali

I’m at a loss to know what to say about government agents who would torture a mentally handicapped person in order to squeeze information out of family members. The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson fills out the picture:

There is a tape recording somewhere, unless the Central Intelligence Agency has destroyed it, that captures the sound of a man named Nazar Ali crying. He was a prisoner in a secret C.I.A. prison, in a foreign country where terrorists were supposed to be interrogated. But Nazar Ali, whom a Senate Select Intelligence Committee report, part of which was released on Tuesday, suggests has a developmental disability—it quotes an assessment of him as “intellectually challenged”—was no sophisticated Al Qaeda operative. It is not even clear, from what’s been released of the report, that his interrogation was an attempt to gain information, or indeed that he was properly interrogated at all. According to the report, his “C.I.A. detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information.” A footnote later in the report, where his name appears, explains that Nazar Ali’s “taped crying was used as leverage against his family member.” Left unexplained is what the American operatives did to make this man cry. Did they plan ahead, preparing recording equipment and proddings, or did they just, from their perspective, get lucky?

….Footnote 32, the same one that outlines the motives for holding Nazar Ali, has a devastating litany, starting with “Abu Hudhaifa, who was subjected to ice water baths and 66 hours of standing sleep deprivation before being released because the CIA discovered he was likely not the person he was believed to be,” and including many others, such as,

Gul Rahman, another case of mistaken identity.… Shaistah Habibullah Khan, who, like his brother, Sayed Habib, was the subject of fabrications.… Haji Ghalgi, who was detained as “useful leverage”…. Hayatullah Haqqani, whom the CIA determined “may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time”…. Ali Jan, who was detained for using a satellite phone, traces on which “revealed no derogatory information”.… Two individuals—Mohammad al-Shomaila and Salah Nasir Salim Ali—on whom derogatory information was “speculative”.… and Bismullah, who was mistakenly arrested … and later released with $[redacted] and told not to speak about his experience.

John Carey’s Peace and Freedom blog lists “ten examples of the horror” in CIA prisons:

  1. Detainees were “rectally fed”
  2. Prisoner dies of suspected hypothermia
  3. 26 of 119 prisoners were wrongfully held
  4. Repeated waterboarding
  5. Prisoners deprived of sleep for a week
  6. Russian Roulette
  7. Prisoner threatened with a drill
  8. Threatening to harm detainees’ children and families
  9. Playing loud music to give detainees a “sense of hopelessness”
  10. Prisoner handcuffed with his hands above his head for 22 hours at a time

Carey’s post fills in the details.

On Facebook, my friend David Rodenhiser reminds us of the applicable moral compass:

There is now a debate going on in the United States about whether torturing prisoners helped thwart planned terrorist attacks and save lives. Democrats largely say “No.” Republicans and the CIA largely say “Yes.” They’re arguing over the wrong question and distracting from the real issue: Does America want to be a nation that tortures prisoners of war? Does the most powerful nation on the planet want to turn its back on one of the basic “rules of war” espoused by the civilized nations of the world?

Because it’s not a rule you only get to live by when it’s convenient. Either you’re a nation that tortures, or you’re a nation that doesn’t. There’s no “except when” clause.

The whole post is here.

 

Sen. John McCain, who spent five-and-a-half years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, and is the only Senate Republican to speak out in support of the report, makes a similar point:

The use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights.

His speech on the Senate floor [video link] is worth hearing in its entirety:

Finally, these events remind me of the courage Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin showed when he blew the whistle on Canadian complicity in the torture of prisoners our Canadian soldiers handed over to the Afghan Army, and of the character assassination then-Defence Minister Peter MacKay subjected him to for exposing these crimes-by-proxy against humanity.