- In the evening, while he was held captive at a secret CIA black site
in Thailand, the high-value detainee Zayn al-Ibidin Muhammed Husayn said
his interrogators would torture him by confining him to a large,
six-foot-tall black wooden box in "extremely uncomfortably positions."
Other times, they would force him to spend hours in a small "dog box."
- The
detainee, better known by his surname, Abu Zubaydah, said he was
deprived of "adequate air" and food in the boxes while an "extreme noise
machine nearby" tormented him.
- This was the start of "my most
painful and cruel period of torture," Abu Zubaydah said. The "pain in
the small box was unbearable. I was hunched over in a contorted way and
my back and knees were in excruciating pain. I began slamming my body
and shackled arms against the inside and screaming for help and tried to
break the door. The wound in my stomach and leg opened up and I started
bleeding, yet I didn't care. I would do anything to stretch my leg and
back for one minute."
- It's a significant development, and especially noteworthy given that Abu
Zubaydah was never supposed to see the light of day. Indeed, in the
Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report, CIA interrogators asked
in a cable for "reasonable assurances" that he would "remain in
isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life" if he did not
die during his interrogation.
- "All of the techniques were applied to him. In fact, no one else endured all the techniques," said Joseph Margulies, one of Abu Zubaydah"s attorneys, in past interviews.
- The most
controversial of the 10, the waterboard, was administered over the
course of a week, Abu Zubaydah said, "as best as I can remember." He
said he was strapped to the waterboard by guards with "black costumes,
masks, and black goggles."
"My mouth and nose and eyes were
covered by a cloth," he said. "The board — and my body — were placed
horizontally. My head was immobilized by a board. Someone poured over
the cloth, which entered my mouth and nose. I could hear one water
bottle empty out by the gurgling noise it made; I hoped that would end
the process, then I heard another bottle start to pour. Water would
enter into my lungs. It felt like my whole body was filled with water;
even my eyes felt like they were drowning."
Abu Zubaydah went on
to say that he started to experience "the panicked sensation of death"
and his body "convulsed in terror and resistance."
"I thought, 'I will die. I will die.' I lost control of my functions and urinated on myself," he said.
The
Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report revealed that at one
point during his waterboarding session, Abu Zubaydah became "completely
unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth." He had
to be resuscitated.
- In his declaration, Abu Zubaydah said he also endured constant sleep
deprivation, was shackled to a chair naked in freezing temperatures for
two to three weeks, was "bombarded with high-decibel noise," and
deprived of solid food.
- When he was subjected to the technique known as "walling," in which a
detainee is slammed into a "flexible" wall in order to "shock" or
"surprise" the captive, Abu Zubaydah said his interrogators repeatedly
shouted questions at him, which the government redacted.
- He said one of the interrogators slammed him against the concrete wall, "hitting my head repeatedly."
"[The interrogator] said something like, 'Are you ready to talk? Now we are going to tell you how real interrogation is done!'"
After
being subjected to marathon interrogation and torture sessions, Abu
Zubaydah said he asked his interrogators, "Tell me what you want me to
say, I will say!" Sometimes, he acknowledged, he "just said things that
were false and that I had no basis to know or believe, simply to get
relief from the pain."
TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AND REPORT, CLICK SOURCE:
This is how the CIA's first captive after 9/11 described his years of torture | VICE News
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