CIA torture report triggers uproar

Torture report of the CIA, released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, after terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Centre in New York has caused uproar in the US.  The UN special investigator demanded those responsible for systematic crimes be brought to justice, and human rights activists pushed for arrest of key CIA and Bush administration figures if they travel overseas. As a matter of fact, attack on September 11 in 2001 was disputed by a group of scientists in America.
The report disputed the CIA's use of torture on suspected terrorists as it was far more brutal than the intelligence agency previously acknowledged. The report accused the CIA of misleading the public, the Congress and the White House about the programme.
The 6,000-page report disputes the CIA's repeated claims that the programme was instrumental in thwarting terrorism plots and locating Osama bin Laden. It lays bare the brutality of the technique used. Detainees across the world were to the point of near drowning, deprived of sleep for 180 hours, beaten and slapped.
Detainees were held in excruciating uncomfortable stress positions and sometimes on broken limbs; and subjected to rectal feeding whereby food was administered anally. One detainee died in captivity, most likely from hypothermia, after being shackled almost naked in cold, concrete-floored cell, the report indicated.
This writer does not find anything new in the report which was repeatedly published during the last part of administration of President George W.Bush by international news media and the Time magazine. The CIA treatment of prisoners of war from Afghanistan and Iraq was totally incompatible with international law.
We recall that Amnesty International and International Red Cross too have criticised the treatment meted out to the prisoners of war in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay prison.  Vice-President Dick Cheney under President George W.Bush was critical of the chief of Amnesty International who compared  Guantanamo Bay prison with that of Gustav of the Soviet Union.
The third Geneva Convention on POWs spells out very clearly that Prisoners of War should not be subjected to cruel treatment and torture, outrageous personal dignity and humiliating treatment.
The Convention against Torture defines torture as any act that inflicts severe pain or sufferings, physical or mental. The United States ratified the Geneva Convention in 1990.  The Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution refers to torture as anything cruel and unusual.  
The CIA acknowledged that its interrogation programme had shortcomings, but denied misleading reports and insisted that it had yielded crucial information that helped thwart terror attacks. George W. Bush denied claims that he had not been fully briefed on the torture programme, while Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a 160-page rebuttal of the findings of Democrat Senator John McCain, to support the release of the report, saying torture actually damaged the US security interests, as well as its reputation as a force for good in the world.
Senator McCain himself was tortured while he was in captivity during war in Vietnam. Both international law and constitutional
provision of the US do not permit torture.
Inhuman torture that was inflicted on prisoners of war surfaced in the tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where two former detainees  gave vivid picture of
torture.
The five-member tribunal, headed by its President Tan Sri Dato Lamin delivered judgment on May 12, 2012, convicted former President George W.Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and legal advisors Alberto Gongales, David Addington, William Haynes, former CIA Director, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.
The President of the tribunal had forwarded the verdict to Kuala Lumpur war crimes commission to forward its findings of conviction to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the United Nations for action. Verdict of this tribunal is mere declaratory in nature.
Earlier in 2011, former President George W.Bush had cancelled his trip to Switzerland to address a gathering of the Jewish community at an invitation to speak on freedom because human rights groups might seek his arrest wherever he planned to visit outside America.
Amnesty International had sent a detailed factual and legal action plan to Swiss prosecutors, claiming there was sufficient information to open criminal investigation.
Both the New York Times and the Washington Post  did not subscribe to torture which these newspaper consider wrong whether or not it has ever worked while at least 26 of the 119 known prisoners were wrongly detained--two of them even CIA informants.
Former CIA Director Michael Haydon came out with an open letter defending tactics adopted by the CIA that he said produced results to find Al-Qaida's force structure, its plots and its leadership while blaming chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee of politicising the entire report.
On two accounts, the report by Senate Intelligence Committee would have repercussion. Possibly extremist groups around the world would treat Americans very badly and secondly, this report would affect Republican candidates in the election in 2016.
The writer is retired diplomat
from Bangladesh
 amjad.21@gmail.com