The US Senate Intelligence Committee released a landmark report on the CIA’s torture program after years of investigation and unprecedented access to CIA files. The 525-page public summary referenced Abu Zubaydah 1,001 times. It confirmed that the program was brutal, unlawful, and ineffective, producing no meaningful actionable intelligence. It also revealed the persistent sharing of misinformation about Abu Zubaydah. The full 6,700-page report remains classified.
The US Senate Committee report detailed some of the abuse of Abu Zubaydah, and included the following:
- “the CIA applied its enhanced interrogation techniques with significant repetition for days or weeks at a time. Interrogation techniques such as slaps and ‘wallings’ (slamming detainees against a wall) were used in combination, frequently concurrent with sleep deprivation and nudity. Records do not support CIA representations that the CIA initially used an ‘an open, non-threatening approach,’ or that interrogations began with the ‘least coercive technique possible’ and escalated to more coercive techniques only as necessary”
- “The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting. Abu Zubaydah, for example, became ‘completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.’”
- “Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads.”
- “Contrary to CIA representations to the Department of Justice, the CIA instructed personnel that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah would take ‘precedence’ over his medical care, resulting in the deterioration of a bullet wound Abu Zubaydah incurred during his capture.”
- In order to justify the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ the government relied on “inaccurate CIA representations about Abu Zubaydah’s status in al-Qaida and the interrogation team’s “certainty” that Abu Zubaydah was withholding information”.
- The CIA provided guarantees to those detaining and torturing him that “Abu Zubaydah should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life…”. which “may preclude [Abu Zubaydah] from being turned over to another country.’”