Guantanamo prisoner's drawings expose brutal torture in CIA’s post-9/11 program

11 May 2023 , 17:15

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Abu Zubaydah, 52, was used as a human guinea pig in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program (Image: Handout)

New drawings from a Guantanamo Bay prisoner have laid bare the brutal torture dished out in the US prison camp in Cuba.

Abu Zubaydah, 52, was used as a human guinea pig in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program and has produced the most comprehensive and detailed account of the brutal techniques he claims he had to face.

A landmark new report by the Centre for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University law school, called 'American Torturers: FBI and CIA Abuses at Dark Sites and Guantanamo', has provided an unprecedented insight into the CIA’s experimentation of savage torture methods, known as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs), on Zubaydah.

The new report comes just a week after the United Nations human rights panel urged the US to immediately release Zubaydah, who has been held without charges since 2006.

This drawing depicts waterboarding in a wooden coffin (Abu Zubaydah)

Key to the report is unseen and brutal annotated drawings by the prisoner which depict gruesome acts of violence, sexual and religious humiliation, and prolonged psychological terror committed against him and other detainees.

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One image shows masked agents physically threatening Zubaydah with anal rape, in another he is drawn chained in the nude in front of a female interrogator.

A further drawing shows guards threatening to desecrate the Qur’an – techniques which were never officially approved by the justice department.

Sometimes prisoners would have their eyes and ears blocked so they could not see or hear anything - or have loud music blasted into their ears as a form of torture (Abu Zubaydah)

Zubaydah is Palestinian but grew up in Saudi Arabia and was shot and captured by US forces in March 2002.

Lawyer Eric Lewis told the Independent that his client was then "waterboarded 83 times, held in boxes the size of coffins and smaller, administered forced enemas, deprived of food, clothing, and necessary medical attention, and subjected to sexual violence, among other cruelties. After one waterboarding, he had to be resuscitated."

Extreme cold torture saw water poured on the prisoners and their shavedheads while chained up, and while a strong fan blasts them (Abu Zubaydah)

The vortex - this illustration depicts 'the vortex of conciseness, pain, stress, hunger, and cold, etc., where they place (the detainee) in it during (24) hours every day', the report said (Abu Zubaydah)

Zubaydah was captured as he was considered "a member of Osama Bin Laden’s inner circle", but the US government later conceded that they mistook his identity. Despite this, he remains incarcerated and has never been tried or charged.

Videotapes of Zubaydah being tortured were filmed by the CIA but then destroyed in violation of a court order.

A nearly 7,000-page torture report by the Senate intelligence committee still remains a secret too.

Waterboarding was for 'suffering, not information' the report stated (Abu Zubaydah)

"This drawing shows the Vortex – the vortex of conciseness, pain, stress, hunger and cold where they place the detainee in 24 hours a day of intense torture, which continues for long weeks or months", the report says.

It continues: "Using their hands, or some sticks, in the sensitive areas around the anus. Wherever the detainee resists, the other guards would place him back in the proper way to do sodomy... They used to say loudly, 'We will put this big stick or a bigger one in your anus to perforate it.'

Abu Zubaydah (Internet Unknown)

"They would suddenly enter the prisoner’s cell and start to hit him against the wall, strongly on the back of his head and back many times and continue for a long time until he passes out.

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"Then they wake him with cold water and continue the beating even if he does not pass out, they will start to slap his face while they were asking him questions and verbally cursing him with obscene language."

'The interrogators would place an industrial fan on the prisoner as they doused him with cold water until he collapsed, held up only by his shackled wrists' (Abu Zubaydah)

Penetrative sexual abuse was inflicted on the prisoners, it is claimed, as drawing 27 shows a cavity search, humiliating 'rape threats' and more (Abu Zubaydah)

The United Nations even went as far as saying his imprisonment may "constitute crimes against humanity."

Their findings mark the first time an international body has referred to the prison camp as a potential crime against humanity, the first time such a body has ruled against the US for Abu Zubaydah’s detention, and the first international case finding against the UK, Morocco, Thailand and Afghanistan — all of whom are deemed complicit in arbitrary detention, rendition and torture.

• The report with all the drawings can be seen in full here

Rachel Hagan