CIA torture report: American officers cried over treatment of Abu Zubaydah

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last updated 8 January 2015

The Senate Intelligence Committee's so-called torture report, released today, sheds new light on the CIA's brutal treatment of Abu Zubaydah, an al Qaeda member who is currently being held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was previously known that Zubaydah had been subjected to waterboarding dozens of times, but the report revealed that at one point he became "completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth."

It apparently got so bad that CIA personnel at the site, referred to as Detention Site Green in the report, grew distressed. "It is visually and psychologically very uncomfortable," one said. Another said, "Several on the team profoundly affected... some to the point of tears and choking up."

Another added that the video of the proceedings "produced strong feelings of futility (and legality) of escalating or even maintaining the pressure." He or she warned that in viewing the tapes, officers should "prepare for something not seen previously." (Some of those tapes remain missing, the report notes.)