US Senate Report Details Harsh Interrogation Methods
By VOA News
22 April 2009
A newly released U.S Senate committee report says Bush administration officials approved the use of harsh interrogation techniques that led to detainee abuses at U.S. military bases at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and elsewhere.
U.S. Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the approval by senior officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. custody.
The Michigan Democrat said those officials wrongly shifted the blame for abuses to low ranking soldiers.
In an interview this week, former Vice President Dick Cheney defended the use of harsh interrogation methods, saying valuable information was obtained as a result.
Rumsfeld authorized harsh techniques
Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the use of 15 harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in late 2002. That memo was later used as a guide by special-operations units in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The report finds the techniques were adapted from a program used to train U.S. forces to resist abusive enemy interrogations, and included sleep deprivation and waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.
Senator Levin said the techniques were never meant to be used on detainees in U.S. custody.
Did Justice Department sanction torture?
The 261-page report repeats - but does not confirm - suspicions harsh techniques were used on alleged al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah before those methods were sanctioned in a 2002 Justice Department memo released last week by the Obama administration. The memos justified the use of harsh tactics by the Central Intelligence Agency.
President Barack Obama said Tuesday he is opposed to prosecuting anyone who used the tactics in accordance with legal guidance from the previous administration - but he said it is up to Attorney General Eric Holder whether to pursue charges against "those who formulated" those legal decisions.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
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