CIA's harsh treatment of terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah has had lasting consequences
A dozen years after the terrorism suspect's ordeal at the hands of the US began, the consequences of his treatment are recounted in recent report
Then the pain began, again.
It was August 2002, at a secret overseas site code-named by the committee Detention Site Green, where Zubaydah was taken to after United States and Pakistani officials grabbed him in the town of Faisalabad, Pakistan, and wounded him in a firefight in March of that year. CIA officials had authorised the use of harsh measures against Zubaydah - he was, after all, the first high-profile al-Qaeda terror suspect captured since the September 11 attacks on America. But his stark ordeal became the CIA's blueprint for the brutal treatment of terror suspects, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report released this week.
The consequences, for both Zubaydah and the interrogators who manhandled him, would prove intense and horrifying. Now, a dozen years later, the consequences are among the most vividly recounted in the long-awaited report on the CIA's interrogation programme.
"Several on the team were profoundly affected, some to the point of tears and choking up," a CIA officer reported in an August 8, 2002, email that described the officer's reactions to the rough interrogation of Zubaydah.
Though some aspects of the CIA's secret detention and interrogation programme initiated during the George W. Bush administration previously have been made public, the 524-page report issued last week reveals startling and graphic new details. Taken together, the descriptions of United States intelligence officers and contract interrogators brutalising detainees reveal the chilling reality of what former Vice President Dick Cheney once called a war "on the dark side".
