Waterboarding is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing the subject on his back with the head inclined downwards; water is then poured over the face into breathing passages, causing the captive to experience the sensations of drowning. In contrast to submerging the head face-forward in water, waterboarding precipitates an almost immediate gag reflex. It can cause extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage or, if uninterrupted, death. Adverse physical consequences can manifest themselves months after the event, while psychological effects can last for years. The term waterboarding was coined in 2004.
In 2007 it was reported that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S. intelligence service, was using waterboarding on extrajudicial prisoners and that the Department of Justice had authorized the procedure. Al-Qaeda suspects upon whom the CIA is known to have used waterboarding are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. According to Justice Department documents, the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed provided information about an unrealized terrorist attack on Los Angeles.
U.S. government officials have at various times said they do not believe waterboarding to be a form of torture. To justify its use of waterboarding, the administration of George W. Bush issued classified legal opinions that argued for a narrow definition of torture under U.S. law, including the Bybee memo, which it later withdrew. In January 2009 President Barack Obama banned the use of waterboarding. In April 2009, the U.S. Department of Defense refused to say whether waterboarding is still used for training (e.g., SERE) purposes.
Technique
Waterboarding was characterized in 2005 by former CIA director Porter J. Goss as a "professional interrogation technique". According to press accounts, a cloth or plastic wrap is placed over or in the person's mouth, and water is poured on to the person's head. As far as the details of this technique, press accounts differ – one article describes "dripping water into a wet cloth over a suspect's face", another states that "cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him".
The United States's Office of Legal Counsel stated the CIA's definition of waterboarding in a Top Secret 2002 memorandum as follows:
In this procedure, the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual's feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it covers both the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth and nose, air flow is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth... During those 20 to 40 seconds, water is continuously applied from a height of twelve to twenty-four inches. After this period, the cloth is lifted, and the individual is allowed to breathe unimpeded for three or four full breaths... The procedure may then be repeated. The water is usually applied from a canteen cup or small watering can with a spout... You have... informed us that it is likely that this procedure would not last more than twenty minutes in any one application.Dating back to the Spanish Inquisition, the suffocation of bound prisoners with water has been favored because, unlike most other torture techniques, it produces no marks on the body. CIA officers who have subjected themselves to the technique have lasted an average of 14 seconds before capitulating.
According to at least one former CIA official, information retrieved from the waterboarding may not be reliable because a person under such duress may admit to anything, as harsh interrogation techniques lead to false confessions. "The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law", says John Sifton of Human Rights Watch. It is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough", said former CIA officer Bob Baer.
Reported demonstrations
Two televised segments, one from Fox News and one from Current TV, demonstrated a waterboarding technique. In the videos, each correspondent is held against a board by the "interrogators." In the Current TV segment, a rag is then forced into the correspondent's mouth, and several pitchers of water are poured onto the rag. The interrogators periodically remove the rag, and the correspondent is seen to gasp for breath. The Fox News segment mentions five "phases" of which the first three are shown. In the first phase, water is simply poured onto the correspondent's face. The second phase is similar to the Current TV episode. In phase three, plastic wrap is placed over the correspondent's face, and a hole is poked into it over his mouth. Water is poured into his mouth through the hole, causing him to gag. He mentions that it really does cause him to gag; that it could lead to asphyxiation; and that he could stand it for only a few seconds.
Christopher Hitchens, a writer for Vanity Fair , voluntarily subjected himself to a filmed demonstration of waterboarding in 2008. The video shows Hitchens being led into a room that has a horizontal board waiting for him; he is bound and has a black mask over his face, blindfolding him. A group of men who are highly trained in this tactic, and who also demanded anonymity, carry out the torture. Hitchens is strapped to the board at the chest and feet, face up, and is unable to move. Metal objects are placed in each of his hands, meant to be dropped if he experiences "unbearable stress." Next, the torturers place a towel over Hitchens' face, and proceed to pour water on the towel. Within seconds, Hitchens throws the metal objects to the floor, and the torturers pull the mask from his face, allowing him to breathe.
Mental and physical effects
Dr. Allen Keller, the director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, has treated "a number of people" who had been subjected to forms of near-asphyxiation, including waterboarding. In an interview for The New Yorker , " argued that it was indeed torture, 'Some victims were still traumatized years later', he said. One patient couldn't take showers, and panicked when it rained. 'The fear of being killed is a terrifying experience', he said". Keller also stated in his testimony before the Senate that "water-boarding or mock drowning, where a prisoner is bound to an inclined board and water is poured over their face, inducing a terrifying fear of drowning clearly can result in immediate and long-term health consequences. As the prisoner gags and chokes, the terror of imminent death is pervasive, with all of the physiologic and psychological responses expected, including an intense stress response, manifested by tachycardia (rapid heart beat) and gasping for breath. There is a real risk of death from actually drowning or suffering a heart attack or damage to the lungs from inhalation of water. Long term effects include panic attacks, depression and PTSD. I remind you of the patient I described earlier who would panic and gasp for breath whenever it rained even years after his abuse".
A memo written in 2003 by the CIA's Office of Medical Services noted that " for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness. "
In an open letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Human Rights Watch asserted that waterboarding can cause the sort of "severe pain" prohibited by 18 USC 2340 (the implementation in the United States of the United Nations Convention Against Torture), that the psychological effects can last long after waterboarding ends (another of the criteria under 18 USC 2340), and that uninterrupted waterboarding can ultimately cause death.
Etymology
While the technique has been used in various forms for centuries, the term waterboarding dates from 2004. First appearance of the term in the mass media was in a New York Times article on May 13, 2004:
In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11 , 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as 'water boarding', in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.The U.S. attorney Alan Dershowitz is reported to have shortened the term to a single word in a Boston Globe article two days later: "After all, the administration did approve rough interrogation methods for some high valued detainees. These included waterboarding, in which a detainee is pushed under water and made to believe he will drown unless he provides information, as well as sensory deprivation, painful stress positions, and simulated dog attacks". He later told the New York Times columnist William Safire that, "when I first used the word, nobody knew what it meant."
Techniques using forcible drowning to extract information had hitherto been referred to as "water torture," "water treatment," "water cure" or simply "torture." A UPI article in 1976 used the term ' water board' tortu
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