CIA Mistaken on 'High-Value' Detainee, Document Shows

[kpete]

Source: Washington Post

CIA Mistaken on 'High-Value' Detainee, Document Shows

By Peter Finn and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, June 16, 2009

An al-Qaeda associate captured by the CIA and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques said his jailers later told him they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization's hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden, according to newly released excerpts from a 2007 hearing.

"They told me, 'Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,' " said Abu Zubaida, speaking in broken English, according to the new transcript of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

President George W. Bush described Abu Zubaida in 2002 as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations." Intelligence, military and law enforcement sources told The Washington Post this year that officials later concluded he was a Pakistan-based "fixer" for radical Islamist ideologues, but not a formal member of al-Qaeda, much less one of its leaders.

Abu Zubaida, a nom de guerre for Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, told the 2007 panel of military officers at the detention facility in Cuba that "doctors told me that I nearly died four times" and that he endured "months of suffering and torture" on the false premise that he was an al-Qaeda leader.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/15/AR2009061503045.html

[Solly Mack]

1. K& R

"harsh interrogation techniques "

Cowards

Call it what it is - torture.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. patsies

[NOW tense]

3. How many Number 3s did we kill? n/t

[Kali]

6. not sure, but I know there were 4 or 5 Number 2's

[Xipe Totec]

9. Are the number 2's the interrogators? n/t

[mbperrin]

4. "CIA tortures wrongly accused man, fucks up again"

Correct headline.

"I never would have agreed to the formulation of the
Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven,
if I had known it would become the American Gestapo." - Harry S Truman

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. "months of suffering and torture" - sorry should cover it - -

.
.
.

I mean it's not like the USA ever did this before or since,

right?

[Soylent Brice]

7. K&R

un-fucking-real.

[gratuitous]

8. So, who's responsible?

Anyone? Bueller? Limbaugh? Miller? O'Reilly? Bumiller? Friedman? Cohen? Novak? Safire? Krauthammer? O'Reilly? Scarborough? Matthews? Russert? Feith? Cheney? Bush? Petraeus? Anyone?