CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach interrogators torture techniques

Source: The Guardian

CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach interrogators torture techniques

Newly declassified documents reveal Ammar al-Baluchi was repeatedly slammed against a wall while naked until all trainees received ‘certification’

Julian Borger in Washington
Mon 14 Mar 2022 14.58 EDT

A detainee at a secret CIA detention site in Afghanistan was used as a living prop to teach trainee interrogators, who lined up to take turns at knocking his head against a plywood wall, leaving him with brain damage, according to a US government report.

The details of the torture of Ammar al-Baluchi are in a 2008 report by the CIA’s inspector general, newly declassified as part of a court filing by his lawyers aimed at getting him an independent medical examination.

Baluchi, a 44-year-old Kuwaiti, is one of five defendants before a military tribunal on Guantánamo Bay charged with participation in the 9/11 plot, but the case has been in pre-trial hearings for 10 years, mired in a dispute over legal admissibility of testimony obtained after torture.

According to the inspector general’s report, the CIA was aware that the 2003 rendition of the detainee, Ammar al-Baluchi, from Pakistani custody to the “black site” north of Kabul was conducted “extra-legally”, because at the time he was in Pakistani jurisdiction and no longer represented a terrorist threat.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/mar/14/cia-black-site-detainee-training-prop-torture-techniques