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WASHINGTON: CIA director Michael Hayden for the first
time admitted publicly Tuesday that the agency had used
“water-boarding,” or simulated drowning, in interrogations of
three top al-Qaeda detainees nearly five years ago.
The technique, which critics say
is tantamount to torture, was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu
Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a time when further
catastrophic attacks on the United States were believed to be
imminent, Hayden said.
“Let me make it very clear and
to state so officially in front of this committee that
water-boarding has been used on only three detainees,” he told
members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “We used it against
these three high-value detainees because of the circumstances of the
time. Very critical to those circumstances was the belief that
additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were imminent
Mohammed has claimed to be the
operational mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Abu
Zubaydah is alleged to have been an aide to al-Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden and al-Nashiri is alleged to have been the operational
commander of the suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
The “big three” were
initially held and interrogated at secret CIA-run detention centers
overseas before being transferred in 2006 to a military-run facility
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Hayden’s remarks were the first
direct official admission that agency interrogators had used
“water-boarding” in questioning “war on terror” detainees.
The admission came amid a
long-running battle between the administration and members of
Congress over so-called enhanced or coercive interrogation
techniques used by the CIA.
--AFP
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