JUS IN BELLO: ABC reveals CIA interrogation techniques:

…The CIA sources described a list of six “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. [Pouring freezing-cold water on someone can kill him, by the way. You die of shock. It’s not just like, “ooh, chilly, maybe I’ll catch a cold.” Check out the first chapter, or thereabouts, in Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation, if memory serves. –ELT]

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

(lots more)

Balkinization comments.

And Julian Sanchez:

The man with graying hair had “blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration,” the result of a synthetic hood placed over his head during interrogation by Navy Seals and “Other Government Agency,” which typically means the CIA. The obese 56-year-old died of “asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression”; the circumstances surrounding his death are classified. The 47-year-old died gagged and shackled to a door frame; his autopsy revealed numerous rib fractures and lung contusions.

These are a few of the findings from 44 reports of autopsies on U.S. detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last month under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Eight of the 21 deaths classed as homicides, the ACLU concluded, appeared to have resulted from abusive interrogation tactics, with strangulation, asphyxiation, and blunt force injuries listed as causes of death. Because the documents sought by the ACLU are trickling out slowly, month by month, it is unclear how many more such reports remain to be uncovered. …

The defenders of wide—and unreviewed—latitude for military interrogators appear to be united in an effort to do Nietzsche one better: Those who grapple with monsters, they argue, had best hurry up and become a bit monstrous themselves. “Coercive” interrogation tactics—not torture, mind you, which intelligence officials will scrupulously avoid even in a total oversight vacuum—will be used only sparingly against Very Bad People, presumably on those surprisingly frequent occasions when Jack Bauer must be called in to discover the location of a suitcase nuke due to explode in mere hours.

more–your must-read link for the day.