Evidence of US Waterboarding Discovered

September 06, 2012

by VOA News

A human rights group says it has uncovered new evidence that U.S. personnel used torture, including waterboarding, while interrogating Libyan Islamists during the Bush administration.

The report released Thursday by New York-based Human Rights Watch features interviews with 14 Libyan dissidents captured and detained in foreign countries, including Afghanistan.

Human Rights Watch says the Islamists were tortured before American agents handed them over "on a silver platter" to then-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Two of the detainees told the group they were either waterboarded or tortured by a technique similar to waterboarding, which causes victims to feel like they are drowning.

The Bush administration claimed that only three terror suspects in U.S. custody (accused al-Qaida members Khalid Shekh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri) - none of them Libyan - had been waterboarded. The Obama administration has condemned waterboarding as torture and has banned the technique's use in interrogations.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood responded to the new allegations by saying the agency "has been on the record that there are three substantiated cases" of waterboarding. She noted that the Justice Department decided not to prosecute agents after reviewing cases of more than 100 detainees in the period following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Human Rights Watch also says that "scores" of the documents it uncovered in Libya show there was a "high level of cooperation" between the Gadhafi government in Libya and the U.S. and Britain in sending the Libyan dissidents back to Libya.