The US Secret Service once created a whole catalog of torture methods to force confessions from suspected terrorists. Those methods were developed by psychologists, two of whom are now on trial.
Seven months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, James Mitchell and John Jessen had a lot to do. They were asked by the American secret service CIA to work out a catalog of measures for, as it was called in those circles, "extended interrogation methods" as psychologists. So Mitchell and Jessen sat at their desks and busily typed out a list of twelve ways to "examine." The already famous waterboarding or being locked in a coffin is also on the list. The client liked the psychologist's work very much: eleven of those twelve methods became a standard procedure when interrogating terrorism suspects.
Only after fifteen years, both Mitchell and Jessen have to answer in court. The human rights organization American Civil Liberties Union sued them on behalf of former detainees Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ben Soud, as well as on behalf of the family of Gul Rahman, who died in a CIA prison from the cold.
The psychologists James Mitchell and John "Bruce" Jessen were the architects of the torture program for the CIA... https://t.co/NEwyq02vkN
— Jesus Pereyra (@JesuspereyraG) July 26, 2017
There is still a legal dispute over whether the defendant psychologists will really face the consequences for complicity in the crime, but a whole series of court hearings have already been conducted to establish the factual situation. That's why Dror Ladin, the lawyer of the humanitarian organization, thinks that a lot has already been done: "Never before have victims of CIA torture gone so far with their lawsuit. And never before have those responsible under oath had to justify what they did."
Just "listened to the commandments"?
The two psychologists were not only sued because they described these torture methods. For seven years, they continued to cooperate with the CIA while it tortured detainees in prisons around the world. Moreover, they even personally supervised the interrogation of some of the more important prisoners, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is believed to have been one of the main planners of the attacks on New York and Washington.
Psychologists have claimed in previous hearings that they only did what the CIA contract asked them to do and that they cannot be blamed for what the employees of the secret service then did. They were "soldiers who followed orders," Jessen said at a hearing earlier this year.
That's not entirely true: both Mitchell and Jessen were indeed officers and psychologists in the US Air Force, but when they did that catalog of horrors, they were no longer in uniform. Both of them were retired, so they were formally - civilians.
But even if they acted like soldiers, this cannot be an argument for lawyer Ladin: "Just as those who supplied poison gas to the Nazis were found guilty in World War II, so Mitchell and Jessen committed a war crime." And they made a lot of money from torturing people."
"Have you become cowards?"
As "advisors", these two received 81 million dollars from the CIA "for research work" - this can be seen from the US Senate torture report, which in 2014 showed for the first time the full scale of the US Secret Service's torture practice. Given that money, the plaintiff's attorney cannot believe the psychologist's claims that they wanted to stop, but continued because of the pressure put on them.
The defendants actually claimed in court that they advised the CIA to curb the use of the waterboarding method: according to the Senate report, there was also a case of one prisoner who was exposed to this method of apparent drowning as many as 83 times within a few days, and according to the hearing protocol, at one point for he says the victim is "not responding to stimuli" - in other words, she has lost consciousness. Then the psychologists themselves allegedly said that there was no point in continuing with waterboarding.
But they claim that their superiors in the secret service had no understanding of such doubts: "They told us that we were scared and that we were cowards, I think they also said that we became pi***es," Mitchell said in court. "If you stop and if a new terrorist attack on the USA happens, then the blood of civilian victims will be on your hands," they allegedly told the psychologists.
"None of it hurts"
On the other hand, even at previous hearings, psychologists denied that their methods caused pain to detainees. The New York Times writes that “d. Mitchell, who once said that most people would rather break both their legs than be subjected to waterboarding, contradicted the plaintiffs' attorney, who called the method painful. 'It sucks, you know. But I don't know that it is painful. I would rather use the word disturbing,'" the American newspaper quotes the psychologist.
These former psychologists of the US Air Force were the most advocates of the walling method. According to her, the prisoner spins in a circle and repeatedly pushes himself to hit the wall, not concrete, but made of somewhat elastic plywood. “It doesn't hurt at all, but you're spinning quite a bit. If it's painful, then the method was poorly implemented," says Mitchell. But Jessen adds: “You're not hurt, but your inner ear is irritated. You hear a really loud noise at the end."
Two former detainees, Sulejman Salim and Mohamed Ben Soud, admitted before the court that these two psychologists did not interrogate them personally, but they were tortured by the methods they developed. For example, the method by which the prisoner's hands are handcuffed above the head in an uncomfortable position, without the possibility of standing upright or leaning on something. Salim claims before the court that it was very physically painful: "Terrible pains in the hands, terrible pains in the back and in the joints", he stated at the hearing. "Maybe you should be tied up like that for an hour so you feel pain if you want pain," Salim said before bursting into tears in front of the judge.
Will they be guilty – even without an admitted crime?
Lawyer Dror Ladin considers these two psychologists personally responsible precisely because they did not wear a uniform while working on torture methods. Of course, US Army psychologists were also involved, but they were the only "private entrepreneurs" tasked with developing torture methods. They did it voluntarily and they made a lot of money.
When it comes to concrete participation in torture, it is much more difficult to find evidence. But according to the Senate report, it can be seen that in 2002, just days before Gul Rahmani's death, Mitchell and Jessen visited the secret prison where he was being held. In the report, it is written that psychologists advised the application of "extended methods" of interrogation on that Afghan, and lawyer Ladin claims that "John Jessen advised that the prisoner should not be given food and not allowed to sleep, and he personally interrogated him." It is known that the cold in the cell was not just a coincidence, but a means of pressure. But Gul passed away.
All those who participated in the torture of prisoners still do not have to fear criminal responsibility. Back in January, US President Donald Trump told ABC News: "Am I worried about waterboarding? As far as I'm concerned, we have to fight fire with fire.'' But the meaning is something else: an acknowledgment that they have been wronged and that America has resorted to unacceptable methods. So that something like that doesn't happen again.
Bonus video:
