Category: Terrorism

On Tuesday morning, the Senate intelligence committee released an executive summary [1] of its five-year investigation into the CIA’s interrogation and detention program. (Read the executive summary here. [2])

Among the report’s most striking revelations is that CIA interrogators were often untrained and in some instances made up torturous techniques as they went along.

The CIA was “unprepared” to begin the enhanced interrogation program, the Senate report concluded. The agency sent untrained, inexperienced people into the field to interrogate Abu Zubaydah, the first important Al Qaeda suspect the US captured.

Within weeks of Zubaydah’s arrival, while he was still in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound, CIA headquarters was planning to throw him in all-white room with no natural lighting, blast rock music 24/7, strip him of his clothes, and keep him awake all day. They did. Extreme interrogations like these, identified as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” went on for more than three months before CIA officers received any sort of training in the new techniques from anyone.

As the overall detention and interrogation program proceeded, many untrained CIA personnel continued to do whatever they wanted, without authorization or supervision. At one facility in 2002, code-named COBALT, “untrained CIA officers…conducted frequent, unauthorized, and unsupervised interrogations of detainees using harsh physical interrogation techniques that were not—and never became—part of the CIA’s formal ‘enhanced’ interrogation program,” the report found. COBALT is reportedly [9] a prison in Afghanistan the agency nicknamed “the Salt Pit.” In one example identified by the report, an interrogator left a COBALT detainee chained naked to the concrete floor. The detainee later died of suspected hypothermia.

The CIA also put a junior official with absolutely no relevant experience in charge of this entire facility. Later, when the CIA’s inspector general investigated COBALT, the CIA said it knew little about what happened there. Several interrogators at the site became uncomfortable with their coworkers’ methods, not sure that they were safe or effective. According to John Helgeron, the CIA inspector general who conducted a formal review of the agency’s detention and interrogation program, CIA interrogators at COBALT had zero training guidelines before December 2002. The report claims, quoting Helgeron: “Interrogators, some with little or no training, were ‘left to their own devices in working with detainees.'”

In 2004, the CIA chief at another detention site, code-named BLACK, penned a long email about his disillusionment with the program, especially deficiencies in training:

And in one particularly heinous example, the CIA headquarters sent an untrained interrogator to question Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a man the CIA claimed was an Al Qaeda “terrorist operations planner” involved in several bombings. One senior CIA official had reservations about sending the untrained interrogator, noting that he heard the man was “too confident, had a temper, and had some security issues.” But the man got sent anyway.

While there, the interrogator allegedly forced Nashiri to stand with his hands over his head for two and a half days, blindfolded him, pushed a pistol up against his head, and revved up a cordless drill close to his body. When this produced no new information, the interrogator slapped the detainee repeatedly on the back of the head, told him he’d sexually assault his mother in front of him, blew cigar smoke in his face, and made him sit in such stressful positions that a medical officer was concerned the detainee’s shoulders would be dislocated.

The CIA base chief let this happen because he thought this interrogator was sent to “fix” the problem of an uncooperative detainee and had permission from headquarters to take such extreme steps. Both men were later reprimanded, according to the report.

The problem of untrained amateurs questioning and torturing of detainees wasn’t unique to the CIA. In 2008, Mother Jones explored [8] the world of untrained interrogators with testimony from Ben Allbright—a soldier who recalls using harsh interrogation techniques while serving as a military guard at a small Iraqi prison called Tiger in Western Iraq:

Ben was not a “bad apple,” and he didn’t make up these treatments. He was following standard operating procedure as ordered by military-intelligence officers. The MI guys didn’t make up the techniques either; they have a long international history as effective torture methods. Though generally referred to by circumlocutions such as “harsh techniques,” “softening up,” and “enhanced interrogation,” they have been medically shown to have the same effects as other forms of torture. Forced standing, for example, causes ankles to swell to twice their size within 24 hours, making walking excruciating and potentially causing kidney failure.

The Senate intelligence committee did not address allegations of torture or abuse by the US military. In fact, when members of the US military stopped by COBALT, they decided it was too risky for them to be involved at all.

In July 2002, CIA headquarters recommended that a group of interrogators, “none of whom had been trained in the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques,” try to “break” a detainee named Ridha al-Najjar, who was arrested in Pakistan and identified as a former bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.

When officers from the US military arrived for a debriefing, the military’s legal adviser took note of the extreme techniques being used. The interrogators left Najjar hanging handcuffed to an overhead bar for 22-hour periods. He was left in total darkness and cold temperatures, hooded and shackled. They forced him to wear a diaper and didn’t provide a bathroom. And on top of that, the US military officer claimed that the warden in charge “[had] little to no experience with interrogating or handling prisoners.”

At the end of the visit, the legal adviser concluded that the treatment of the prisoner and the concealment of the facility were too big a liability for the military to get involved. But even then, Najjar’s treatment became a “model” for future interrogations, according to the report.

An estimated 15,000 militants from at least 80 nations are believed to have entered Syria to help overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad according the CIA and studies by ISCR and The Soufan Group. Many of these fighters are believed to have joined units that are now part of the Islamic State. Western officials are concerned about what these individuals may do upon returning to their native countries.

According to the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, at least 330 Pakistani youth have already left for Syria to join the hard-line Islamic State to help overthrow Asad’s government. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan led by Fazlullah has declared allegiance to the Islamic State. Fazlullah freely operates across the border, kept out only by the current Pakistan military operation in FATA. However, the free movement of the Afghan Taliban into Pakistan threatens to undercut the gains of Zarb-i-Azb.

Observers believe the bigger threat could come from middle class Pakistani youth returned from Europe and the US, with good computer skills and acceptance of the prevailing fatalist religious mind-set in Pakistan.  While overseas, the cultural background of these young men made them recoil against liberal, Western values, including the ubiquitous presence of women. Finding themselves at home amidst a failing economy and exposed to religious fatalism, they are prime candidates for `jihad,’ be it in Afghanistan or Syria.

International Center for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence  (ISCR), The Soufan Group, CIA. Gene Thorp, Julie Tate and Swati Sharma. Published on October 11, 2014, 6:44 p.

PESHAWAR, Oct 2 — Amid a wave of bombing attempts in this northwestern Pakistani city on Thursday, a bomb rigged to a timer exploded inside a passenger van, killing seven and wounding six, the police said.

Although the attack was the only one of eight attempted bombings to succeed here, the police said, the mass of attempts pointed to a concerted effort by militants to intensify their attacks on government targets.

“The bombs were intended to destroy an electrical tower, and to target police and a convoy of the law enforcement agencies,” said Shafqat Malik, the head of the Peshawar bomb disposal unit, noting that the bombs all had “a level of sophistication.”

“The bomb that went off was to target civilians. Imagine what would have happened, had they all gone off,” he said. “Today was the worst day in my professional career.”

The van that was bombed was set to carry passengers to Parachinar, the main town in the Kurram tribal region.

In an interview, a policeman investigating the case, Ejaz Khan, said that a man had left two bags in the van, then asked the driver to wait for him while he went to bring more passengers. The bomb, with roughly 10 pounds of explosives, went off after he left.

Although Kurram has in the past been a center of sectarian violence between Sunnis and minority Shiites, police officials said it was more likely that the bombing was a randomly chosen terrorist act rather than a targeted killing.

“People are heading home for Eid holidays,” Mr. Khan said, referring to the Eid al-Adha festival this weekend. “There is a lot of rush. No one could have known which passenger was heading where.”

A senior police superintendent, Najib Bhagvi, suspected that Pakistani Taliban militants were behind the attacks. That organization, along with some of its allies and splinter groups, has come under increasing pressure since the start of a military offensive against militant bases in North Waziristan in June.

“Peshawar is heating up, and this is the blow back of the operation in Waziristan,” Mr. Bhagvi said. “All the terrorist outfits, including Al Qaeda, have joined forces and are hitting back.”

Peshawar has seen a surge in militant attacks this year, particularly against the police. Twenty-five policemen have been killed since January, including a police inspector who was shot dead outside his house on Thursday.

Mr. Malik, the bomb squad commander, worried that more attacks were sure to come. “Tough days are ahead,” he said.

A senior Taliban official has denied he is in Pakistan after a Twitter gaffe saw his location tagged as “Sindh, Pakistan”.

Zabihullah Mujahid, whose location is supposed to be secret, has instead said on Twitter that the tagging of Pakistan as a location was an “enemy plot,” insisting he was in Afghanistan, according to the BBC.

The gaffe has added significance as Pakistan has been accused on many occasions of having secret links with the Taliban, which the country’s government denies.

After his followers alerted Mr Mujahid of the location tag, he tweeted: “My Twitter account has been manipulated – as part of weak efforts of enemy plot, it showed that I am based in Sindh of Pakistan, I call this attempt as fake and shame [sic].”

“Now the enemy’s fake act has been exposed, and with full confidence, I can say that I am in my own country.”

Twitter said its geo location data is based on latitude and longitude data, or other information that is provided by users at the time that they post their message.

The social media platform even includes a warning in its explanation of the geo location function, stating: “Remember, once you post something online, it’s out there for others to see.”

Additional reporting by AP