Report: CIA took photographs of naked detainees
The CIA routinely took naked photographs of terrorism suspects it detained before sending them to be tortured by foreign partners, The Guardian reported Monday.
That the CIA photographed detainees before transport was buried in a footnote, deep in a 500-page excerpt of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture in 2014:
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There are also few CIA records detailing the rendition process for detainees and their transportation to or between detention sites. CIA records do include detainee comments on their rendition experiences and photographs of detainees in the process of being transported.
But interviews with former officials revealed that some of the subjects were naked when they were photographed. One described the photos, which remain classified, as "very gruesome." The newspaper also reported the photos showed prisoners who were "blindfolded, bound and show visible bruises." Others "show people believed to be CIA officials or contractors alongside the naked detainees."
The CIA's rationalization was reportedly to document prisoners' physical condition before transferring them to foreign custody.
Human rights experts said the naked photography raised serious ethical and legal questions. One, who had not seen the photos, described the practice to The Guardian as "a form of sexual humiliation," "cruel," "inhumane," and "degrading."
The agency has been criticized for using nudity to humiliate detainees before. A Senate report revealed that CIA agents often stripped detainees nude, sometimes while shackled or exposed to cold temperatures, resulting in the hypothermic death of at least one prisoner.
The report prompted a lawsuit from the ACLU late last year.
And in June, a former prisoner from at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, alleged even more sexual abuse by officials. The detainee, Majid Khan, said interrogators at an unidentified CIA black site video taped him naked, poured cold water on and touched his genitals and hung him naked from poles. (He also said they subjected him to threats of violence, forced rectal feedings and waterboarding.)
The CIA also came under fire in 2004, when reports from the Associated Press, CBS News and The New Yorker revealed that the CIA and the U.S. Army committed several atrocities, including sexual humiliation, against prisoners at the Abu Graib prison in Iraq.
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