Shaming of the West: Devastating report reveals horrific extent of CIA torture - and covers up Britain's role

• Full scale of the CIA's torture programme revealed in devastating report
• One detainee left on life support and another died from hypothermia
• The agency repeatedly lied about its 'enhanced interrogation techniques'
• This included waterboarding, beatings, sleep deprivation and more
• The White House, Congress and the public were all repeatedly misled
• CIA agents lied about their torture techniques preventing attacks on Britain
• In reality, the four different plots targeting Britain had already been foiled

The full, abhorrent scale of how the US used torture as an everyday weapon in the ‘war on terror’ was laid bare last night.

On a day of shame for the West, a Senate investigation revealed the sadistic abuse of detainees in a network of secret prisons around the world.

The devastating report – described as ‘a stain on the values and conscience’ of the US – last night triggered demands for a similar, full-scale inquiry in Britain to uncover its own secrets.

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A detainee is escorted to his cell at Guantanamo Bay. The brutal treatment of detainees was first exposed in 2002 when pictures emerged showing inmates at the camp shackled and in orange jump suits

One detainee was so brutalised he was left unable to speak and on life support. Another, chained almost naked to the floor, died from hypothermia while a third was hung by his arms from an iron bar for 22 hours.

The agency – which worked hand in glove with MI5, MI6 and the Blair Government – repeatedly lied and misled the White House, Congress and the public about its so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.

CIA agents also lied about how the use of long-since discredited Cold War techniques had produced information which helped foil attacks in Britain, the bombshell report reveals.

Officials repeatedly insisted that information extracted from waterboarding, beatings, sleep deprivation and other barbaric methods had stopped four attacks against the UK – including a plot to down jets at Heathrow Airport and fly planes into Canary Wharf.

But in the long-awaited report, immediately rejected by the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee said the claims – repeated in public by former President George W Bush – had been ‘inaccurate’. In fact, the plots had already been foiled by the time any information was extracted from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others.

The brutal treatment of detainees was first exposed in 2002 when pictures emerged of inmates shackled and in orange jump suits at Camp X Ray in Gunatanamo Bay, Cuba.

Key findings of the US Senate report into CIA torture

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (pictured left), who the U.S. believe to be the principal architect of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times and to the point of drowning, according to internal CIA reports. Abu Zubaydah (right) was left 'completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth' after waterboarding

The 499-page report was heavily redacted, with all references to the British security services and Diego Garcia – a British base, known to have been used for rendition flights – blacked out. MPs said there appeared to have been a ‘pact of non-aggression’ between Britain and the US and it was impossible to know what had been left out.

Senior Tory backbencher Andrew Tyrie, who led a Parliamentary inquiry into rendition, said: ‘The publication of report should be no substitute for us in the UK getting to the bottom of this.’

Asked if he was confident that British intelligence services had not acted on information obtained by torture, David Cameron last night said that ‘things happened that were wrong’ after 9/11.

The Rendition, Detention and Interrogation programme took place from 2002 to 2007. The Senate report revealed techniques and abuse which went far beyond anything previously made public. It said:

• The CIA, armed with a budget of $200million, used the brutal and discredited techniques on 119 detainees.
• At least 39 detainees experienced techniques such as waterboarding which the Justice Department never approved.
• Other abuse included threats to kill or sexually assault family members, including children.
• At least 17 detainees were tortured without the approval of CIA HQ. At least 26 detainees were wrongly held.
• One man at a notorious ‘dark prison’ in Afghanistan died from hypothermia after being shackled, nearly naked, to a concrete floor.
• Some of the CIA operatives had violent and abusive backgrounds which should have barred them from the agency.

But none of 20 ‘successes’ attributed to the techniques led to unique or otherwise unavailable intelligence. The CIA repeatedly misled politicians and public, giving inaccurate information to obtain approval for using techniques

Senate intelligence committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, called the torture programme ‘a stain on our values and on our history’. She said: ‘During the brutal interrogations the CIA was often unaware the information was fabricated.’

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In 499 horrifying pages, the US Senate’s Intelligence Committee yesterday demolished the boast of the world’s most powerful democracy that it inhabits a higher moral universe than the terrorists it condemns as barbarians.

She told the Senate the torture programme was ‘morally, legally and administratively misguided’ and ‘far more brutal than people were led to believe’.

Two US contract psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who had no experience as interrogators, or any specialised knowledge of counter-terrorism were paid $81million (£50million) to supervise the programme. By the time it was terminated in 2009 by President Obama, the company they set up was worth $180million.

From Thailand to Poland to Guantanamo Bay, the CIA established a network of secret prisons – known as ‘black sites’ – to torture terror suspects.

An intricate web of airports around the globe – including at least one in Prestwick, Scotland – was allegedly used for the illegal transfer of terror suspects to secret CIA jails in countries outside of US territory and legal protection. The most surprising location of a ‘black site’ is Poland, allegedly at Szymany, an international airport now disused. Secret prisons were also established in Lithuania and Romania. The Council of Europe said there were further secret prisons in Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Algeria and Uzbekistan.

The report outlined how the administration run by President George W Bush (pictured) unleashed the programme in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 

British QC Ben Emmerson, the UN rapporteur for counterterrorism, demanded criminal prosecutions of the guilty – raising the prospect of high-profile trials. He said: ‘The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the US government provides no excuse whatsoever.’

The report – a summary of a still-classified 6,000 page investigation - outlines how the Bush administration unleashed the programme in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in September 2001.

But the report sparked a bitter backlash last night from the CIA and Republicans in America – who rejected its findings.

CIA director John Brennan said the agency had ‘made mistakes’ but the techniques were authorised by the Bush administration. President Obama said the methods ‘did significant damage to America’s standing in the world.’

Why was UK's role censored in dossier? 

David Cameron was last night facing demands for a full inquiry into the Blair government’s involvement in the CIA’s shameful torture programme.

A 499-page report released by a US Senate committee did not include a single reference to MI5, MI6 or even Diego Garcia, a British territory known to have been used for rendition flights.

But the summary contained heavy redactions – sparking fears that ministers had lobbied the US to ‘censor’ the alleged complicity of Labour ministers in ill-treatment or torture.

Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed (pictured) claims MI5 fed his torturers questions and were aware of his mistreatment

Censored: The heavily redacted part of the report (pictured), naming Binyam Mohamed

Andrew Tyrie, who led the all-party group on extraordinary rendition, said the UK was known to have been implicated in the CIA programme in a ‘number of ways’.

Last night he told the BBC the UK now had ‘to get to the truth of all this’ because ‘sunlight acts as a disinfectant for doing such terrible things as kidnap and torture, for making such policy blunders’. He added: ‘It’s impossible to tell how much the report has been redacted or reduced, cut, to take out the extent of the involvement of other countries, in particular America’s closest ally the United Kingdom.

‘It is quite likely that we will find that those redactions are very heavy. There is a non-aggression pact on this, where the UK on the basis of something called the control principle does not release information that they have been given by the United States security forces, and likewise the Americans don’t do so in reverse.

‘But that is no substitute and the publication of report should be no substitute for us in the UK getting to the bottom of this.’

The British Government had been accused of seeking to censor the report ahead of its publication.

Over two years, the British ambassador in Washington, Sir Peter Westmacott, met with members of the committee on at least 11 occasions. His predecessor held a similar number of meetings over three years.

Prime Minister David Cameron (pictured) said last night in the wake of the report that 'torture is always wrong'

William Hague, the former foreign secretary, disclosed in a letter to the human rights group Reprieve that the UK had ‘made representations to seek assurance that ordinary procedures for clearance of UK material will be followed in any event that UK material provided to the Senate committee were to be disclosed’.

Last night, human rights group Liberty renewed its demands for a judge-led inquiry.

Its director Shami Chakrabarti said: ‘The breadth and brutality of CIA torture is laid bare – can our own authorities keep averting their eyes?’

Asked if he was confident that the British intelligence services had not acted on information obtained by torture, Mr Cameron said last night that ‘things happened that were wrong’ after September 11.

Speaking in Ankara, he said: ‘Torture is wrong, torture is always wrong. Those of us who want to see a safer and more secure world, who want to see extremism defeated, we won’t succeed if we lose our moral authority, if we lose the things that make or systems work and countries successful.

‘After 9/11 there were things that happened that were wrong, and we should be clear about the fact that they were wrong. In Britain we have had the Gibson inquiry that has now produced a series of questions that the intelligence and security committee will look at.’

Last December, an interim report into Britain’s involvement in US torture found that concerns about the treatment of terror suspects were not raised by MI6 agents because Britain was worried about offending key allies.

The inquiry by High Court judge Sir Peter Gibson found that allegations of sleep deprivation, hooding and waterboarding were not properly raised with other countries because of a ‘fear of damaging liaison relationships’.

He said he would have liked to investigate whether UK officers ‘may have turned a blind eye’ to the use or threat of torture because it helped when they came to interrogate ‘a now compliant detainee’.

But, instead of being completed by Sir Peter, the inquiry was axed after fresh criminal investigations were launched into allegations involving Libyan victims.

Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed claims MI5 fed his torturers questions and were aware of his mistreatment.

He is one of 16 terror suspects paid compensation by the British taxpayer after claiming they were ill-treated. A section on Mohamed in the Senate report was blacked out at the point he was handed over to the UK authorities.

The British government has come under pressure to answer the Diego Garcia allegations.

CIA lied about UK plots

The CIA justified its interrogation techniques by saying the brutal methods had stopped terror attacks in Britain.

It even claimed information obtained from detainees saved thousands of British lives. But yesterday the US Senate’s 499-page report concluded the CIA was lying and that the UK government was already aware of the threats.

The CIA claimed that by subjecting 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to repeated waterboarding a plot to destroy Heathrow was thwarted.

Then Prime Minister Tony Blair (pictured) sent tanks to Heathrow in 2003 following intelligence warnings of a planned terrorist strike

The initial idea was to hijack multiple aeroplanes and crash them into the airport but this later changed to shooting them down, the report said.

It insisted that, in truth, intelligence agencies had already been alerted to Al Qaeda’s efforts to target the airport.

Tony Blair sent tanks to Heathrow in February 2003 after intelligence warnings that terrorists were plotting to bring down aircraft with rocket propelled grenades.

Alert: Tanks on patrol at Heathrow in 2003 after receiving intelligence terrorists were planning to bring down aircraft with rocket propelled grenades

Sheikh Mohammed was arrested a month later and interrogated only after the plan was disrupted. The report states: ‘Over a period of years, the CIA provided the identification and thwarting of the Heathrow airport plot as evidence for the effectiveness of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques. These representations were inaccurate. Enhanced interrogation techniques played no role.’

After being repeatedly suffocated by water, Sheikh Mohammed also revealed how he had plotted to attack London’s Canary Wharf, the CIA claimed.

But the report contradicts this: ‘A review of records indicates that the Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf plotting had not progressed beyond the initial planning stages when the operation was fully disrupted.’

Dhiren Barot planned to kill thousands of people by bringing carnage, bloodshed and butchery to the streets of the UK and the US.

The CIA claimed that because Barot, a former Hindu who converted to Islam, was submitted to the waterboarding technique, this plan was thwarted.

But the report found his 2004 plot, which included limousines packed with explosives and radioactive ‘dirty’ bombs for the attacks, was in fact foiled by the UK authorities.

The capture of British Islamist Saajid Badat, the co-conspirator of shoebomber Richard Reid, is also among the top eight success stories wrongly cited by the CIA, the report found.

Badat was jailed in 2005 after he admitted plotting to explode a shoe bomb on a transatlantic flight in December 2001. He had hatched the plan with Reid, but changed his mind at the last minute and refused to go through with it.