New Details On C.i.a. Terrorist Interrogations In Thailand

[Michael W]

No secret US prison here, officials repeat

BANGKOK: -- Representatives of the Foreign Ministry and US Embassy Thursday rejected any suggestion that Thailand had hosted one of the secret prisons that US President George W Bush acknowledged this week.

[...]

Foreign Ministry deputy spokes-man Kittikhun Chartprasert said Thursday that, despite strong speculation, Thailand never had one of these so-called black sites.

--The Nation 2006-09-07

The New York Times

At a Secret Interrogation, Dispute Flared Over Tactics

By DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: September 10, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 — Abu Zubaydah, the first Osama bin Laden henchman captured by the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was bloodied and feverish when a C.I.A. security team delivered him to a secret safe house in Thailand for interrogation in the early spring of 2002. Bullet fragments had ripped through his abdomen and groin during a firefight in Pakistan several days earlier when he had been captured.

The events that unfolded at the safe house over the next few weeks proved to be fateful for the Bush administration. Within days, Mr. Zubaydah was being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques — he was stripped, held in an icy room and jarred by earsplittingly loud music — the genesis of practices later adopted by some within the military, and widely used by the Central Intelligence Agency in handling prominent terrorism suspects at secret overseas prisons.

[...]

By all accounts, Mr. Zubaydah’s condition was rapidly deteriorating when he arrived in Thailand. Soon after his capture, Mr. Zubaydah nearly died of his infected wounds. At one point, he was covertly rushed to a hospital after C.I.A. medical officers warned that he might not survive if he did not receive more extensive medical treatment.

According to accounts from five former and current government officials who were briefed on the case, F.B.I. agents — accompanied by intelligence officers — initially questioned him using standard interview techniques. They bathed Mr. Zubaydah, changed his bandages, gave him water, urged improved medical care, and spoke with him in Arabic and English, languages in which he is fluent.

To convince him they knew details of his activities, the agents brought a box of blank audiotapes which they said contained recordings of his phone conversations, but were actually empty. As the F.B.I. worked with C.I.A. officers who were present, Mr. Zubaydah soon began to provide intelligence insights into Al Qaeda.

[...]

In Thailand, the new C.I.A. team concluded that under standard questioning Mr. Zubaydah was revealing only a small fraction of what he knew, and decided that more aggressive techniques were warranted.

At times, Mr. Zubaydah, still weak from his wounds, was stripped and placed in a cell without a bunk or blankets. He stood or lay on the bare floor, sometimes with air-conditioning adjusted so that, one official said, Mr. Zubaydah seemed to turn blue. At other times, the interrogators piped in deafening blasts of music by groups like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sometimes, the interrogator would use simpler techniques, entering his cell to ask him to confess.

“You know what I want,” the interrogator would say to him, according to one official’s account, departing leaving Mr. Zubaydah to brood over his answer.

F.B.I. agents on the scene angrily protested the more aggressive approach, arguing that persuasion rather than coercion had succeeded. But leaders of the C.I.A. interrogation team were convinced that tougher tactics were warranted and said that the methods had been authorized by senior lawyers at the White House.

The agents appealed to their superiors but were told that the intelligence agency was in charge, the officials said. One law enforcement official who was aware of events as they occurred reacted with chagrin. “When you rough these guys up, all you do is fulfill their fantasies about what to expect from us,” the official said.

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10detain.html

[Ulysses G.]

These terrorists are actively trying to kill and maim as many people as they can merely for the publicity. They have tortured and cut off the heads of civilians just to get TV time.

ANY methods to get them to reveal plots that may kill hundreds, or thousands or millions of innocent men, women and children are justified.

Live by the sword; DIE by the sword!

[farangsay]

These terrorists are actively trying to kill and maim as many people as they can merely for the publicity. They have tortured and cut off the heads of civilians just to get TV time.

ANY methods to get them to reveal plots that may kill hundreds, or thousands or millions of innocent men, women and children are justified.

Live by the sword; DIE by the sword!

OK , you have a point.

Just don't go climbing on any moral high ground to make it.

[Diablo Bob]

These terrorists are actively trying to kill and maim as many people as they can merely for the publicity. They have tortured and cut off the heads of civilians just to get TV time.

ANY methods to get them to reveal plots that may kill hundreds, or thousands or millions of innocent men, women and children are justified.

Live by the sword; DIE by the sword!

OK , you have a point.

Just don't go climbing on any moral high ground to make it.

Any ground that UG uses would be a high moral ground in comparison to the NO-Moral ground that most terrorist use.

Don't you aspire to be on a moral standing when you post farangsay? Try it sometime!

[farangsay]

These terrorists are actively trying to kill and maim as many people as they can merely for the publicity. They have tortured and cut off the heads of civilians just to get TV time.

ANY methods to get them to reveal plots that may kill hundreds, or thousands or millions of innocent men, women and children are justified.

Live by the sword; DIE by the sword!

OK , you have a point.

Just don't go climbing on any moral high ground to make it.

Any ground that UG uses would be a high moral ground in comparison to the NO-Moral ground that most terrorist use.

Don't you aspire to be on a moral standing when you post farangsay? Try it sometime!

No thanks.

Don't like the company up there.

[britmaveric]

Som Nam Na

[ThaiPauly]

These terrorists are actively trying to kill and maim as many people as they can merely for the publicity. They have tortured and cut off the heads of civilians just to get TV time.

ANY methods to get them to reveal plots that may kill hundreds, or thousands or millions of innocent men, women and children are justified.

Live by the sword; DIE by the sword!

For the FIRST TIME...I agree with you 100%

[kurgen]

These terrorists are actively trying to kill and maim as many people as they can merely for the publicity. They have tortured and cut off the heads of civilians just to get TV time.

ANY methods to get them to reveal plots that may kill hundreds, or thousands or millions of innocent men, women and children are justified.

Live by the sword; DIE by the sword!

I agree

Ulysses for President

[NovaBlue05]

Any responsible government that wouldn't practice any and all creative and coercive techniques to get potentially life saving information from these butchering scum should be held criminally responsible.

[Couthy]

How many of these hundreds of alleged terrorists have been brought before international courts with the evidence pertinent to their alleged offences and found guilty?.

After all, many of them have been held for 3 years or more.

Do say please........

Given the technical and intelligence resources that have been put into proving their guilt and not forgetting that they have been in any way of thinking, tortured - well, how many have appeared in international courts, or even U.S. or U.K. courts?.

Do say, please..............

Any professional interogator will freely admit that you can get more or less anyone to admit to anything within 48 hours. In courts of law however, it is how that information is obtained which is often relevant. Thankfully, or the police in all countries would still be beating confessions out of 16 year olds.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

These terrorists are actively trying to kill and maim as many people as they can merely for the publicity. They have tortured and cut off the heads of civilians just to get TV time.

ANY methods to get them to reveal plots that may kill hundreds, or thousands or millions of innocent men, women and children are justified.

Live by the sword; DIE by the sword!

For the FIRST TIME...I agree with you 100%

[Diablo Bob]

How many of these hundreds of alleged terrorists have been brought before international courts with the evidence pertinent to their alleged offences and found guilty?.

After all, many of them have been held for 3 years or more.

Do say please........

Given the technical and intelligence resources that have been put into proving their guilt and not forgetting that they have been in any way of thinking, tortured - well, how many have appeared in international courts, or even U.S. or U.K. courts?.

Do say, please..............

Any professional interogator will freely admit that you can get more or less anyone to admit to anything within 48 hours. In courts of law however, it is how that information is obtained which is often relevant. Thankfully, or the police in all countries would still be beating confessions out of 16 year olds.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

These terrorists are actively trying to kill and maim as many people as they can merely for the publicity. They have tortured and cut off the heads of civilians just to get TV time.

ANY methods to get them to reveal plots that may kill hundreds, or thousands or millions of innocent men, women and children are justified.

Live by the sword; DIE by the sword!

For the FIRST TIME...I agree with you 100%

While you worry about the terrorist's last 3 years, I worry about the possibility that they might actually see freedom.

I don't know where you write from, but I do know you have never actually seen what they (Terrorist) can/have done personally! I have..... I have spent the better part of the past 4 years in Afghanistan, I have seen what they do, personally.

Spare me the argument about a court and a jury....... these people act as the judge and jury, they are terrorist, they are not freedom fighters, they are terrorist.

Do say please...... that they are terrorist and they deserve NOTHING! No respect, no due process, no decent burial! They are terrorist!

[fxm88]

ANY methods to get them to reveal plots that may kill hundreds, or thousands or millions of innocent men, women and children are justified.

"If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?"

[qualtrough]

I was going to rant about the miserable failure of the Bush administration in its idiotic 'War on Terror', but I asked myself, is it related to Thailand? Answer, No. So I won't say anything.

[chownah]

Anyone who thinks that torture is ever justified is a terrorist.

[qualtrough]

Anyone who thinks that torture is ever justified is a terrorist.

So right...

[Totster]

Topic Closed

totster