After being tortured at the CIA's infamous "black sites," three former CIA detainees are suing the architects of the spy agency's detention and interrogation program,
The Washington Post reports.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court on Tuesday in Spokane, Wash., against James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, a pair of psychologists who according to
The Huffington Post, earned more than $80 million using untested, brutal techniques, such as waterboarding, on the agency's behalf.
The suit alleges that Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a Tanzanian arrested in Kenya and transported to Afghanistan in 2003 and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, captured in Pakistan in 2003, were subjected to "extreme cold, darkness, noise, repeated beatings," as well as "shoved into small confinement boxes."
"The terrible torture I suffered at the hands of the CIA still haunts me," said Salim in a statement. And, Soud added that after being exposed to a form of waterboarding, he has suffered "deep psychological harm."
According to the Post, the suit also says that the CIA kidnapped and killed Gul Rahman, an Afghan citizen who died of hypothermia in November 2002 at Salt Pit with assistance by Bruce Jessen.
The CIA noted that "dehydration, lack of food, and immobility due to 'short chaining'" contributed to Rahman's death, but a Senate report notes that Rahaman was found dead the morning after being shackled to the wall of his cell, stripped half naked and forced to sit on the bare concrete floor without pants.
"They claimed that their program was scientifically based, safe, and proven, when in fact it was none of those things. The program was unlawful and its methods barbaric," said Steven Watt, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Human Rights Program who said the psychologists conspired with the CIA to torture the three detainees and committed war crimes.
According to the Post, Jessen and Mitchell have declined to comment on the issue, but Mitchell was once heard in an interview with
Vice News stating that "there were some abuses that occurred."
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