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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.

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