The full, abhorrent scale of how the US used torture as an everyday weapon in the ‘war on terror’ was laid bare last night. On a day of shame for the West, a Senate investigation revealed the sadistic abuse of detainees in a network of secret prisons around the world. The devastating report – described as ‘a stain on the values and conscience’ of the US – last night triggered demands for a similar, full-scale inquiry in Britain to uncover its own secrets.
One detainee was so brutalised he was left unable to speak and on life support. Another, chained almost naked to the floor, died from hypothermia while a third was hung by his arms from an iron bar for 22 hours. The agency – which worked hand in glove with MI5, MI6 and the Blair Government – repeatedly lied and misled the White House, Congress and the public about its so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. In the long-awaited report, immediately rejected by the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee said the claims – repeated in public by former President George W Bush – had been ‘inaccurate’. In fact, the plots had already been foiled by the time any information was extracted from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others.
