Gangster Government. From [HERE] Attorneys for Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah have filed a lawsuit against the two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who developed the harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA, including waterboarding and sleep deprivation. The UK human rights group Reprieve [advocacy website] announced the case on Wednesday. The attorneys are seeking to subpoena [advocacy website] the psychologists in order to uncover evidence about the American-led torture that allegedly went on in Poland. According to US law, a federal district court may [discovery order, PDF] "order discovery of documents and testimony for use in a foreign proceeding from any person who resides or is found in the court's district." The case will be heard in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Washington [official website]. The CIA had detained [AP report] the plaintiff in a secret Polish prison from 2002 to 2003 on suspicions that he was a "facilitator" for al Qaeda. Zubaydah has been held at Guantanamo since 2006. In April 2016 a federal judge ruled [JURIST report] that another lawsuit against the same psychologists with different plaintiffs could proceed.

Captured in Pakistan in 2002, Abu Zubaydah was the first person subjected to a CIA torture regimen devised by contractor psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who currently face a federal lawsuit brought by subsequent CIA torture victims. Initially thought to possess vital information on al-Qaida and its plots, and hardened by resistance to interrogation, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times, stuffed into a wooden box not much bigger than a coffin, held naked, kept awake for extensive periods and had his body painfully contorted.

Following a 47-day period of isolation at the black site, Abu Zubaydah experienced 19 days of torture on what the Senate intelligence committee later observed was a “near 24-hour-per-day basis”. During that time, interrogators placed him in a coffin-sized box for the equivalent of 11 days and two hours, and inside an even smaller box for a total of 29 hours. It took six days for interrogators to cable back to the CIA that it was unlikely Abu Zubaydah knew anything about upcoming plots, and seven for them to cable back it was “highly unlikely”.

Not only did Abu Zubaydah’s torture continue, the CIA represented it to the Bush administration and Congress as a success, and subsequently tortured at least 118 others.

Recently declassified documents from CIA medical staff, who were present during black-site torture, found that in “retrospect”, Abu Zubaydah “probably reached the point of cooperation even prior to the August [2002] institution of ‘enhanced’ measures – a development missed because of the narrow focus of questioning”. 

Never charged with a crime, Abu Zubaydah has been invisible to the public long after his September 2006 transfer to Guantánamo Bay, where he and other former black site denizens have been jailed at the classified Camp 7. His attorneys’ attempts at winning his freedom through habeas-corpus proceedings in federal court have proven fruitless, with a federal judge stalling for years to rule on basic legal filings.[MORE]

Guantanamo Bay remains [JURIST backgrounder] a controversial issue due to allegations of torture and lack of legal rights for detainees. In January a federal judge declined [JURIST report] to intervene in the release of a Guantanamo prisoner. In November then-president Barack Obama blamed [JURIST report] the failure to close Guantanamo Bay on Congressional restrictions. In August a federal appeals court threw out [JURIST report] a former Guantanamo detainee's torture claim.