Rights panel report shows instances of waterboarding by CIA in Afghanistan

Days after the Justice Department closed out its criminal investigation of the deaths of two detainees while in the custody of the CIA,new information has surfaced calling into question official accounts of the extent of waterboarding by American interrogators

CHARLIE SAVAGE & SCOTT SHANE

Days after the Justice Department closed out its criminal investigation of the deaths of two detainees while in the custody of the CIA,new information has surfaced calling into question official accounts of the extent of waterboarding by American interrogators.

A new report by the non-profit group Human Rights Watch (HRW),based on documents and interviews in Libya after the fall of its dictator,Muammar Gaddafi,includes a detailed description of what appears to be a previously unknown instance of waterboarding by the CIA in Afghanistan nine years ago.

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The account,documented by Human Rights Watch,could not be independently corroborated. The report underscores how much is still not known about the United States treatment of terrorist suspects during the early years of the Bush administration.

The 156-page report,Delivered Into Enemy Hands: US-led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafis Libya,written by Laura Pitter,recounts interviews with 14 Libyans who it says are former detainees sent back to Libya around 2004,after Colonel Gaddafi agreed to renounce his nuclear ambitions and help fight Islamist terrorism. At least five,Pitter writes,had been held by the CIA in Afghanistan before their rendition.

A particular focus of the report is the account of Mohammed Shoroeiya,reportedly detained in Pakistan in April 2003 and held in American custody in Afghanistan.

Shoroeiya told HRW that at one point in Afghanistan,his American captors had put a hood on his head and strapped him to a wooden board,then poured water over his face until he felt as if he was asphyxiating.