‘Just Kill Them’: New Book Reveals Shocking Details about CIA's Torture Program

Cathy Scott Clark, a British journalist, and author, speaking at a virtual panel hosted by the New America think tank on Monday, introduced her forthcoming book ‘The Forever Prisoner’, which will hit the stands next week.

She revealed details of an undisclosed meeting of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where senior intelligence officials discussed various controversial methods to deal with individuals subjected to rendition and "enhanced interrogation techniques".

While examining several options, including holding them in detention, transferring them to another country, and prosecuting them, one top official was cited as asking: "Why don't we just kill them?"

"You hear revelations like that, which I found a bit alarming," she said in a virtual panel.

Her book focuses on the case of Guantanamo inmate Abu Zubaydah, who was interrogated using techniques that amounted to torture, including being waterboarded 83 times in one month, hung naked from a ceiling, and deprived of sleep for 11 consecutive days.

The Guantanamo Bay detention center, also known as “Gitmo” became synonymous with prisoner abuse and torture in the early years of the US so-called “war on terror”.

President George Bush’s administration selected Guantanamo, a desolate place near the eastern tip of Cuba because it was under full control of the US military and relatively close to the mainland, but beyond the reach of American courts.

The idea was that if the detainees were held away from US soil, they would have no legal right to seek a judge’s order of habeas corpus, which protects against unlawful imprisonment.

Guantanamo detainees were subjected to widespread abuse, humiliation, and torture during their interrogations, the accounts of which were gradually exposed to the outside world by the few inspectors who visited the prison and some of the inmates who were released years later.