SECRET CIA PRISONS: Alleged abuse probe ordered

PRISONER ABUSE PROBE

CIA interrogators threatened an al Qaeda prisoner with a gun and an electric drill to try to scare him into giving up information, according to a long-concealed inspector-general’s report due to be made public on Monday.

A special US prosecutor has been appointed to investigate allegations of abuse of terror suspects. The announcement of John Durham’s selection came as a report was published detailing allegations of abuse by CIA agents.

Agents threatened to kill a key terror suspect’s children and sexually assault another’s mother, it is claimed. The report was made in 2004 but only a heavily censored version appeared and a judge ordered fuller disclosure.

The sources did not want to be identified because the report, completed by the CIA’s inspector general in 2004, has not yet been made public. A federal judge in New York has ordered a redacted version of the report released Monday as part of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

The interrogations took place in the CIA’s secret prisons before 2006, when then-President George W. Bush moved all detainees from such facilities to the federal prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Also on Monday, the department of justice’s ethics office called for the reopening of a dozen prisoner abuse cases – mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan.