Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

surprise NOT. CIA Mistaken on 'High-Value' Detainee, Document Shows

An al-Qaeda associate captured by the CIA and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques said his jailers later told him they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization's hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden, according to newly released excerpts from a 2007 hearing.

"They told me, 'Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,' " said Abu Zubaida, speaking in broken English, according to the new transcript of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

President George W. Bush described Abu Zubaida in 2002 as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations." Intelligence, military and law enforcement sources told The Washington Post this year that officials later concluded he was a Pakistan-based "fixer" for radical Islamist ideologues, but not a formal member of al-Qaeda, much less one of its leaders.

Abu Zubaida, a nom de guerre for Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, told the 2007 panel of military officers at the detention facility in Cuba that "doctors told me that I nearly died four times" and that he endured "months of suffering and torture" on the false premise that he was an al-Qaeda leader.

Abu Zubaida, 38, was subjected 83 times to waterboarding, a technique that leads victims to believe they are drowning and that has been widely condemned as torture. The Palestinian was held at a secret CIA facility after his capture in Pakistan in March 2002.

The Abu Zubaida transcript, and those of five other "high-value detainees," including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. Versions of the transcripts were released by the Pentagon in 2007.

the rest ....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/15/AR2009061503045.html