Hi there,

Please don’t turn away from this message. Democracy Now! is a free source of independent news for tens of millions of people around the world, but less than 1% of our global audience donates to support our critical journalism. Let’s pick up the percentage! Today, a generous contributor will TRIPLE your donation to Democracy Now!, which means if you give $10, we’ll get $30. Please don’t miss out on this opportunity to triple your impact. Democracy Now! doesn't accept advertising income, corporate underwriting or government funding because nothing is more important to us than our editorial independence. We rely on you for support—and we’re counting on you right now. I hope you’ll give as much as you can today. Every dollar makes a difference. Thanks so much.
-Amy Goodman

Non-commercial news needs your support.

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

Please do your part today.

Donate

CIA Used Prisoner in Afghan Prison as a “Training Prop” for Torture

HeadlineMar 15, 2022

Newly declassified documents reveal the CIA used a prisoner at a secret prison in Afghanistan as a training prop to teach interrogators how to torture other prisoners. Portions of a 2008 report by the CIA’s inspector general made public in court filings reveal the prisoner, Ammar al-Baluchi, was repeatedly stripped naked and had his head slammed into a plywood wall by trainee interrogators, who lined up to practice the technique on Baluchi for up to two hours at a time. The inspector general’s report revealed the torture left Baluchi with brain damage and did not yield any useful intelligence. Baluchi is still being held at the U.S. prison in Guantánamo, where he’s been in pretrial hearings for 10 years on charges he participated in plotting the 9/11 attacks.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top