TIMES ONLINE– CIA interrogators used the controverisal waterboarding technique 183 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, attacks and 83 times on another al-Qaeda suspect, according to The New York Times.
A 2005 Justice Department memorandum revealed that the simulated drowning technique was used on Mohammed 183 times in March 2003.
Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner questioned in the CIA’s overseas detention programme in August 2002, was waterboarded 83 times, although a former CIA officer had told news organisations that he had been subjected to only 35 seconds under water before agreeing to tell everything he knew.
President Barack Obama has banned the use of waterboarding, overturning a Bush Administration policy that it did not constitute torture.
The memo is one of four authorising “harsh interrogation” that were declassified by the Obama Administration last week. They show that the CIA based more than 3,000 intelligence reports on the questioning of “high-value” terror suspects from September 11, 2001, to April 2003.
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© TIMES ONLINE, 2009
