No reasonable person can ignore two recent reports:
1
Gina Haspel Observed Waterboarding at C.I.A. Black Site, Psychologist Testifies
The testimony emerged in pretrial hearings in the Cole bombing case at Guantánamo Bay, where the war court is wrestling with the legacy of torture after 9/11.
WASHINGTON — During Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing to become director of the C.I.A. in 2018, Senator Dianne Feinstein asked her if she had overseen the interrogations of a Saudi prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, which included the use of a waterboard.
Ms. Haspel declined to answer, saying it was part of her classified career.
(FILE PHOTO: Ex-CIA director Gina Haspel walks to attend a closed door briefing in the Senate © Global Look Press / Stefani Reynolds)
While there has been reporting about her oversight of a C.I.A. black site in Thailand where Mr. Nashiri was waterboarded, and where Ms. Haspel wrote or authorized memos about his torture, the precise details of her work as the chief of base, the C.I.A. officer who oversaw the prison, have been shrouded in official secrecy.
But testimony at a hearing last month in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, included a revelation about the former C.I.A. director’s long and secretive career. James E. Mitchell, a psychologist who helped develop the agency’s interrogation program, testified that the chief of base at the time, whom he referred to as Z9A in accordance with court rules, watched while he and a teammate subjected Mr. Nashiri to “enhanced interrogation” that included waterboarding at the black site.
Z9A is the code name used in court for Ms. Haspel.
The C.I.A. has never acknowledged Ms. Haspel’s work at the black site, and the use of the code name represented the court’s acceptance of an agency policy of not acknowledging state secrets — even those that have already been spilled. Former officials long ago revealed that she ran the black site in Thailand from October 2002 until December 2002, during the time Mr. Nashiri was being tortured, which Dr. Mitchell described in his testimony.
Guantánamo Bay is one of the few places where America is still wrestling with the legacy of torture in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Torture has loomed over the pretrial phase of the death penalty cases for years and is likely to continue to do so as hearings resume over the summer.
Defense teams have been asking military judges to exclude certain evidence from the war crimes trials of accused Qaeda operatives as tainted by not just torture but also cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In May, that meant revisiting what happened nearly 20 years ago at the secret prison in Thailand. . .
The law firm that employs Ms. Haspel, King & Spalding L.L.P., declined to comment and referred questions to the C.I.A., which also declined to comment.
Dr. Mitchell never mentioned the person by name. Instead, because she was serving in a clandestine role at the time, he was required to refer to the chief of base as Z9A, or, as one lawyer sounded it out, “Zulu Nine Alpha.”
The codes are part of the choreography of the hearings at Guantánamo Bay, where the court has a mute button to protect against inadvertent disclosures of classified information and prosecutors work with the C.I.A. to keep official secrets out of the public record.
Prosecutors in the death-penalty cases, working with members of the intelligence community, assigned alphanumeric codes to most C.I.A. staff members who worked at the black sites. Nations where the C.I.A. had prisons are referred to by numbers. For Dr. Mitchell’s hearing, prosecutors provided him with a secret list of names and alphanumerics — a key of sorts that lawyers in court called “a crosswalk.”
For example, Dr. Mitchell referred to the agency’s chief interrogator in 2002, who died not long after he oversaw some of Mr. Nashiri’s harshest interrogations, as NX2.
And although Ms. Haspel’s role as chief of base at the black site in Thailand is widely known, it is still considered a state secret.
The judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., agreed to allow Dr. Mitchell to testify because the C.I.A. had destroyed videotapes that defense lawyers argue showed the psychologists torturing and interrogating Mr. Nashiri and another prisoner at the black site in Thailand. Defense lawyers said that deprived them of potential evidence, including something they might have wanted to show a military jury deciding whether to impose a death penalty.
The disclosure that the C.I.A. had destroyed the tapes — most of them showing Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee taken into custody and known to be tortured by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks — prompted the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate the black site program.
Ms. Haspel has acknowledged her role in the destruction of those tapes as a chief of staff to the operations chief, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. At her confirmation hearing, she said, “I would also make clear that I did not appear on the tapes.” . .
The Senate Intelligence Committee study of the C.I.A. program, only a part of which is public, said that interrogators wanted to stop using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Mr. Nashiri because he was answering direct questions, but they were overruled by headquarters.
Mr. Nashiri would also be tortured later, after Dr. Mitchell had taken him to a different C.I.A. black site. Another interrogator revved a drill next to the naked detainee’s hooded head, apparently to try to get him to divulge Qaeda plots. At another black site in 2004, the C.I.A. infused a dietary supplement into his rectum for refusing to eat. His Navy lawyer has called the procedure rape."
ADDITIONAL REPORTING:The CIA black sites were set up as part of America’s War on Terror, essentially as secret prisons to detain ‘enemy combatants’.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in 2014 that Poland violated the European Convention on Human Rights, as the CIA had tortured Zubaydah and al-Nashiri in a secret facility in the country.
In 2018, the ECHR found that by allowing torture in their countries, Romania and Lithuania also violated the rights of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri.
2
UK officials in line for immunity in assisting crimes overseas, say critics
Exclusive: Draft security bill would let spies and ministers enable killings and torture, warn charity and ex-minister
"Ministers and spies would be given immunity from accusations of assisting crimes overseas under a new national security law to be debated by MPs next week, a human rights charity and former Tory cabinet minister have warned.
The Home Office was told that the powers being proposed were “far too slack” and would diminish the UK’s moral authority to condemn atrocities such as the killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The concerns centre on a change to the Serious Crime Act, which was passed in 2007 and made it an offence to do anything in the UK to encourage or assist a crime overseas – such as aiding an unlawful assassination or sending information to be used in a torture interrogation.
Under a clause in the national security bill, which is having its second reading in the House of Commons on Monday, this would be disapplied where “necessary for the proper exercise of any function” of MI5, MI6, GCHQ or the armed forces.
Reprieve, an international human rights charity, said it would effectively grant immunity to ministers or officials who provide information to foreign partners that leads to someone being tortured or unlawfully killed in a drone strike.
Concerns were also raised that the move would restrict victims’ ability to seek civil damages in the courts.
Maya Foa, joint executive director of Reprieve, said it was an unthinkable power to grant ministers and officials that would “risk putting them above the ordinary criminal law” and could even embolden leaders to “commit serious crimes thinking they can do so with effective impunity”.
Foa said that enacting clause 23 of the national security bill would “destroy the UK’s moral legitimacy to condemn similar atrocities by autocratic states” after the murder of Khashoggi, a journalist who US intelligence agencies believe was killed on the orders of the Saudi ruler, Mohammed bin Salman. . .
[ ] The national security bill was announced in last month’s Queen’s speech, with the intention to support Britain’s spy agencies and “help them protect the United Kingdom”. It will be debated when MPs return from recess next Monday.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The amendment to the Serious Crime Act will only remove the risk of individuals facing criminal liability where they are carrying out authorized lawful activities deemed necessary, in good faith and following proper procedure."
“Put simply, the government believes it is not fair to expect the liability for this action to sit with an individual UK intelligence officer or member of the armed forces who is acting with wholly legitimate intentions.”
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