Marcy Wheeler, combing through the recently released OPR report, discovers the 12th torture technique military psychologists and torture program developers James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen wanted to use on Abu Zubaydah, who was originally trumpeted as a top al-Qaeda official, but who turned out to be more of a "fixer" for the group:
Now, it's not clear whether Mitchell and Jessen ever did use mock burial with Abu Zubaydah. Zubdaydah didn't mention it in the narrative he gave to the ICRC of his treatment.
But there are two more reasons why Yoo’s refusal to approve mock burial is dangerous for the CIA. First, an FBI agent told CIA and DOJ that the technique was borderline torture. Nevertheless, the CIA asked to have the technique available to it.
Also, any legal discussion of why mock burial would be a problem would focus on how torture statutes prohibit the threat of imminent death. Yet after mock burial was specifically excluded as a torture technique, CIA torturers went on to threaten detainees with a power drill and a gun. In other words, someone at that CIA had already been told, specifically, that they could not use the threat of imminent death on detainees. But on at least two occasions, they did so anyway.
The Justice Department investigation into the use of torture is limited to those instances in which interrogators went beyond the "legal limits" of torture allowed by the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel. So if Zubayda was subject to a mock burial, that would seem to be a clear violation of those limits.
-- A. Serwer
