GAWKER: Two very different flights landed at Mitiga military airport in Libya just over a decade ago. The first was organized by the CIA and MI6. On board were a family of six surrounded by guards, the frightened children separated from their parents, the father chained to a seat in a rear compartment with a needle stuck in his arm. The second flight, only a couple of days later, carried Tony Blair in comfort, on his way to shake hands and do business with Colonel Gaddafi.
I know about the first flight, because I was one of the children. I know about the chains and the needle because Sami al-Saadi—a long-time political opponent of Colonel Gaddafi—is my father and I saw him in that state. I was 12 years old, and was trying to keep my younger brothers and my six year-old sister calm. The guards took us to see our mother once on the 16-hour flight. She was crying, and told us that we were being taken to Gaddafi’s Libya. Shortly before the plane landed, a guard told me to say goodbye to my father, at the front of the plane. I forced myself ahead and saw him with a needle in his arm. I remember guards laughing at me. Then I fainted.
We were taken off the plane and bundled into cars. Hoods were pulled over my parents’ heads. Libyans forced my mother, sister and I into one car, my brothers and father another. The convoy drove to a secret prison outside Tripoli, where I was certain we were all going to be executed. All I knew about Libya at that time was that Colonel Gaddafi wanted to hurt my father, and that our family had always been moving from country to country to avoid being taken to him. Now we had been kidnapped, flown to Libya, and his people had us at their mercy. MORE
HUFFINGTON POST: A leading Libyan opponent of Colonel Gaddafi, forcibly returned to the north African country in a joint operation with the UK and US, where he was tortured, has won a £2.23m settlement with the UK government. Sami al Saadi, a leading Gaddafi opponent, was forced on board a plane in Hong Kong – having sought for years to avoid the agents of the Libyan dictator –with his wife and four young children, in an alleged joint UK-US-Libyan operation. They were then flown to Libya, where all of them were initially imprisoned and al Saadi was held and tortured. MORE
MOTHER JONES: This morning, the Senate intelligence committee released an executive summary of its years-long investigation into the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. President George W. Bush authorized the so-called “enhanced interrogation” program after the 9/11 attacks. The full report includes over 6,000 pages and 35,000 footnotes. You can read it here. Here are some of the lowlights:
1. The CIA used previously unreported tactics, including “rectal feeding” of detainees (p. 100, footnote 584):
2. CIA officers threatened the children of detainees (p. 4):
3. Over 20 percent of CIA detainees were “wrongfully held.” One was an “intellectually challenged” man who was held so the CIA could get leverage over his family (p. 12):
4. One detainee, Abu Hudhaifa, was subjected to “ice water baths” and “66 hours of standing sleep deprivation” before being released because the CIA realized it probably had the wrong man (p. 16, footnote 32):
5. The CIA, contra what it told Congress, began torturing detainees before even determining whether they would cooperate (p. 104):
6. CIA officers began torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “a few minutes” after beginning to question him (p. 108):
7. The CIA planned to detain KSM incommunicado for the rest of his life, without charge or trial (p. 9):
8. During waterboarding sessions, KSM made up a story that Al Qaeda was trying to recruit African-American Muslims…in Montana (p. 118):
9. The CIA torturers told CIA leadership that torture wasn’t producing good information from KSM. But CIA leaders didn’t relay that information to Congress (p. 212):
10. A detainee was tortured for not addressing an interrogator as “sir”—and for complaining about a stomach ache (p. 106):
11. CIA officers cried when they witnessed the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah (p. 44):
12. Within weeks of his arrival in CIA custody, Zubaydah was “on life support and unable to speak” (p. 30):
