Although no officials allowed their names to be used in the article, they all defended the brutality inflicted on inmates as "just and necessary." One of them who supervised the capture and transfer of prisoners declared, "If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job."

According to the Post, after prisoners are captured, "take-down teams"--a mix of special forces, FBI agents, CIA case officers and local collaborators--escort them to their place of imprisonment, aiming to disorient and intimidate them on the way. The captives are then "softened up" by military police and special forces troops, who "beat them up and confine them in tiny rooms."

Inmates who are accused of membership in al Qaeda or the Taliban are held in metal shipping containers at the airbase. Those considered uncooperative are subjected to "stress and duress techniques," explained intelligence specialists familiar with CIA interrogation methods. The methods include forcing them to stand or kneel for hours with black hoods over their heads or spray-painted goggles covering their eyes; holding them in awkward, painful positions; and depriving them of medical care or sleep with a "24-hour bombardment of lights."

Two Afghan prisoners died in U.S. custody at the Bagram airbase in December. Initial autopsies concluded that one died of a heart attack and the other of a blocked artery in the lungs.

In other cases, usually involving "lower-level" captives, inmates are transferred into the custody of the "foreign intelligence services" of other governments known for using brutal means to extract information. The interrogators are presented with a CIA-compiled list of questions to get answers to. The article named Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt. The Moroccan regime, for one--which has a "documented history of torture as well as long-standing ties to the CIA"--has sharply increased its cooperation with Washington in the interrogation of these prisoners, the Post reported.

These "extraordinary renditions"--the name given such transfers--are done "without recourse to legal process," noted the big-business paper. In spite of Washington’s official denials of such practices, one official boasted, "We send them to other countries so they can kick the [shit] out of them." Some regimes are reported to have used sodium pentathol and other mind-altering drugs on prisoners.

"Extraordinary renditions" were used by the administration of William Clinton after the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. For several years his government provided funding for the Egyptian government’s intelligence service, which is notorious for its torture of prisoners.

The article confirms reports published last March in the British Guardian revealing that Washington was secretly sending prisoners suspected of al Qaeda connections "to countries where torture during interrogation is legal." Waving the banner of the "global fight against terrorism," an unnamed U.S. diplomat declared, "After September 11, these sort of movements have been occurring all the time. It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can’t do on U.S. soil." Aside from Afghanistan, Washington has overseas interrogation facilities--off limits to lawyers, news reporters, the Red Cross, and others--on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and elsewhere. U.S. officials have stated that almost 3,000 alleged al Qaeda members and their supporters have been arrested worldwide since Sept. 11, 2001. About 625 are incarcerated at the U.S. prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and thousands are imprisoned in other countries.  
 
 
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