Sexual threats, harsh grilling detailed in CIA ‘torture’ report

BRACING FOR IMPACT American embassies on heightened alert amid fears of a backlash to a long-delayed Senate report

WASHINGTON: The Senate Intelligence Committee prepared to release a report on the CIA’s anti-terrorism tactics on Tuesday and US officials moved to shore up security at American facilities around the world as a precaution.

The report will include graphic details about sexual threats and other harsh interrogation techniques the CIA meted out to captured militants in the years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, sources familiar with the document said on Monday.

The report, which committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said would be released on Tuesday, describes how al Qaeda operative Abdel Rahman al Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was threatened with a buzzing power drill, the sources said. The drill was never actually used on him.

It documents how at least one detainee was sexually threatened When it happened: In the years following the 9/11 attacks in 2001 at “black sites” in a range of countries as US intelligence raced to find the perpetrators

Main methods: Sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces, slapping, humiliation, waterboarding - simulated drowning.

Delayed publication: Head of

with a broomstick, the sources said.

Preparing for a worldwide outcry from the publication of such graphic details, the White House and US intelligence officials said on Monday they had shored up security of US facilities worldwide.

The report, which took years to produce, charts the history of the CIA’s “Rendition, Detention and Interrogation” program, the Senate Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein began investigation in 2009, but report’s publication was held up by negotiations with CIA over how much could be released The report: Runs info to more than

6,000 pages, drawing on huge quantities of evidence, but it remains classified and only a 480-page summary is to be released. which President George W Bush authorized after the Sept 11 attacks.

“We are concerned that this release could endanger the lives of Americans overseas, jeopardize US relations with foreign partners, potentially incite violence, and be used as a recruitment tool for our enemies,” senators Marco Rubio and Jim Risch said in a statement.