More Details on U.S. Interrogators Banging Prisoners’ Heads Against Walls

“When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.”
—Abu Zubaydeh, “high value” prisoner and US torture victim.

By Jeremy Scahill

In the Wall Street Journal story on how the Obama White House may block the release of the Bradbury torture memos (see my earlier post), the paper reports that “Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner’s head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos.”

This tactic was described in some detail in the recently made public ICRC report, which provides the testimony of 14 “high value” prisoners tortured by the US. In it, the ICRC says, “Beatings by use of a collar held around the detainees neck and used to forcefully bang the head and body against the wall [was] alleged by six of the fourteen.”

Here is that section from the report:

Six of the fourteen alleged that an improvised thick collar or neck roll was placed around their necks and used by their interrogators to slam them against the walls. For example, Mr Abu Zubaydah commented that when the collar was first used on him in his third place of detention, he was slammed directly against a hard concrete wall. He was then placed in a tall box for several hours (see Section 1.3.5., Confinement in boxes). After he was taken out of the box he noticed that a sheet of plywood had been placed against the wall. The collar was then used to slam him against the plywood sheet. He thought that the plywood was in order to absorb some of the impact so as to avoid the risk of physical injury. Mr Abu Zubaydah also believed that his interrogation was a form of experimentation with various interrogation techniques. Indeed some forms of ill-treatment were allegedly used against him that were not reported to have been used on other detainees. He claimed that he was told by one of the interrogators that he was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques.

Mr Bin Attash alleged that during interrogation in Afghanistan: “on a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room. It was also placed around my neck when being taken out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead me along the corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the corridor during such movements”.

Mr Khaled Shaik Mohammedalleged that, in his third place of detention: “a thick plastic collar would be placed around my neck so that it could then be held at the two ends by a guard who would use it to slam me repeatedly against the wall”.

Obama needs to release the Bradbury memos so the American people can further understand what was done in their names.