Red Cross: Abu Zubaydah’s Treatment By U.S. Was ‘Categorically’ Torture
For us national-security writers, our version of Iron Man or The Dark Knight is Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side -- the first book on the war on terrorism from
Jul 31, 202010.7K Shares2.1M Views
For us national-security writers, our version of “Iron Man” or “The Dark Knight” is Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side”— the first book on the war on terrorism from (in my opinion) the nation’s absolute best national security reporter. Scott Shane of the New York Times has a choice previewin the New York Times of what Mayer’s much-anticipated volume contains:
“„Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001.
“„The book says that the International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were “categorically” torture, which is illegal under both American and international law.
“„The book says Abu Zubaydah was confined in a box “so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position” and was one of several prisoners to be “slammed against the walls,” according to the Red Cross report. The C.I.A. has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were waterboarded, a practice in which water is poured on the nose and mouth to create the sensation of suffocation and drowning.
I suppose it’s obscene to be excited about reading accounts of this horror, but Mayer is my summer blockbuster.
Camilo Wood
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