News Update

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1 November 2021

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Heaven: Gina Haspel's Prison

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Grotius – Center for International Law and Human Rights issued today a briefing titled: Heaven – Gina Haspel’s Prison. Gina Haspel was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency between 2018 – 2021. President Donald Trump appointed her for this position. According to publicly available information she was the head of CIA’s secret prison in Thailand from November 2002 where aggressive interrogation techniques amounting to torture took place.

 

The briefing focuses on Haspel’s responsibility for the crime of torture as head of CIA’s Thailand secret prison. She was aware of the torture taking place in this detention facility, had the authority to discontinue it but failed to do so, and participated in destroying the video tapes that recorded the torturous interrogations in CIA’s Thailand detention location.[1]

 

Haspel was never held accountable for her actions in the United States or elsewhere. She was neither investigated nor prosecuted for her conduct and omissions. On the contrary, since 2002 she had consistently risen in her ranking at the CIA until her appointment by President Donald Trump to lead the organization. Trump claimed that interrogating by waterboarding works despite his awareness of its illegal nature[2] and former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo asserted that he would consider reinstating this interrogation technique notwithstanding its unlawfulness.[3] 

 

Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri’s written interrogation chronicle demonstrates his torture leading him to beg his interrogators to cooperate despite asserting that he had no information about the issues they wanted to hear about. The European Court of Human Rights concluded that he was tortured also in CIA’s detention facility in Poland, which applied the same methods he endured in his previous location in CIA’s custody in Thailand. A medical expert who examined Nashiri determined that he suffers from exceptional and lasting damage to his physical and mental wellbeing:

He is irreversibly damaged by torture that was unusually cruel and designed to break him. In my over 20 years of experience treating torture victims from around the world, including Syria, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr. al-Nashiri presents as one of the most severely traumatized individuals I have ever seen.

 

Haspel’s supervision of torture at the CIA’s secret prison in Thailand was part of a comprehensive enhanced interrogation program devised by the CIA pursuant to President George Bush’s authorization.  The program lasted from 2002 - 2008. It was partly reported in November 2005[4] and publicly confirmed in 2006.[5] Details about the program's troubling performance have been included in the 2014 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence special report.[6] The latter document acknowledged the illegal character of the CIA’s program in its entirety and the organization’s persistent and malicious failure to adequately inform about it. No prosecutorial measures against Haspel or any other implicated American official also subsequent to this report.[7]  

 

Nashiri’s torture is a violation of articles 3 and 130 of the third Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949) and articles 1 and 16 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Haspel’s culpability as a co-perpetrator of the crime of torture at CIA’s Thailand detention facility is difficult to dispute. The inherent nature of the criminal interrogation precludes alleging the defense mistake of law.

 

As a former official Haspel does not enjoy immunity from foreign investigation and prosecution. The crimes attached to Haspel’s behavior have no statute of limitations. [8]The impunity granted for CIA’s former Director in the United States generates jurisdiction for Haspel’s arrest, investigation, and prosecution in other countries that apply the rule of law in relation to serious international crimes such as torture.

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                                                            Donald Trump: Torture Works, February 2016

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The Briefing

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[1] “Having a Torturer Lead the C.I.A”, New York Times, 13 March 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/opinion/cia-torture-gina-haspel.html

[2] David Muir’s interview with President Donald Trump, ABC News, 25 January 2017, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/transcript-abc-news-anchor-david-muir-interviews-president/story?id=45047602

[3] Ryan Browne, “Trump’s pick for CIA says he’s open to waterboarding”, CNN, 21 January 2017, https://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/21/politics/pompeo-cia-waterboarding/index.html

[4] Douglas Jehl, “Report Warned C.I.A. on Tactics In Interrogation”, New York Times, 9 November 2005.

[5] Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Bush signs measure on interrogations”, New York Times, 17 October 2006.

[6] U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, Findings & Conclusions – Executive Summary, 3 December 2014 (declassified). This document was approved on 13 December 2012 and updated for release on 3 April 2014. Its scope is 505 pages. The Complete report (6900 pages) remains classified. See: https://www.aclu.org/cases/senate-torture-report-foia   

[7] For reasons beyond comprehension, the American political and legal cultures tend to substitute genuine accountability with officials’ leaks to the press and certain congressional reports. This approach is clearly dangerous given the impunity it offers to systemic violations of international law by the American Government in general, and the CIA's performance in particular.  

[8] At least one international procedure has been launched against Haspel.

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