Thursday 2 July 2015
Torture ‘not okay’: Former FBI agent
As for those who say torture is justified, in light of the people that lose their lives in terror attacks, Mr Soufan said: “Your job is not to prosecute and not to take revenge to get the truth and get the information. So just because somebody murdered, somebody raped, does not mean it is okay to torture that individual.
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Torture ‘not okay’: Former FBI agent
For eight years, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Ali Soufan interrogated some of America’s most dangerous terrorist suspects.
But Mr Soufan left the FBI after disagreeing with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and their “enhanced interrogation” techniques and today, he continues to be an outspoken critic of torture.
“We had an investigation that took place in the Senate. They did a report which is more than 6,000 pages and which has 38,000 footnotes. They disagreed with the assessment that the programme worked in any way, shape or form. Their investigation matched everything that I know about the programme,” he said, in an interview on Channel NewsAsia’s Conversation With.
“Their investigation matched everything that I know about the programme. It matched the inspector general’s (opinion) of the CIA in his report in 2004 that said the enhanced interrogation technique did not result in any actionable intelligence said terrorist attacks.”
The 6,000-page report from the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) in 2004 detailed the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. After months of voting, a shorter, 525-page report was released, bringing to light disturbing accounts from within black sites such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
It revealed that the George W Bush administration had sanctioned the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” – which include waterboarding and sleep deprivation – on alleged terrorist detainees. In particular, it highlighted the techniques used on 9/11 attacks mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. “Abu Zubaydah’s eye was so badly damaged during his time in prison that it was surgically removed,” the report said.
As for those who say torture is justified, in light of the people that lose their lives in terror attacks, Mr Soufan said: “Your job is not to prosecute and not to take revenge to get the truth and get the information. So just because somebody murdered, somebody raped, does not mean it is okay to torture that individual.
“We have laws. We have something called the Constitution. We have something called the Bill of Rights and you arrest the individual and you put them through the system. The system prosecutes them and a judge will sentence them to death or life in prison or to whatever sentence. This is not the interrogator’s job or the police officer’s job or the FBI agent’s or CIA officer’s or military officer’s job to take revenge because of somebody did something like this,” he stated.
“The ticking bomb scenario does not really exist. That exists in Hollywood. It does not exist in reality.”
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