I met Philippe Sands, QC, the author of the book “Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values” in 2008. He told me that upon receiving an anonymous tip, his interest peaked in what happens behind the closed doors of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp — which opened 10 years ago. Once he got his hands on the interrogation logs of one detainee, it was fairly easy to conclude that the techniques met the international definition of torture. And that’s not it.

The techniques were approved by the Bush-led administration. Donald Rumsfeld, the then Secretary of Defense, had even undersigned the torture memo stating: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing [by prisoners] limited to four hours? D.R."

Here is a glimpse of the interrogation log of detainee 063, Mohamed al-Qahtani, who allegedly tried to enter the United States to be the 20th hijacker but was denied entry.

Day 28, 20 December 2002:

11:15: Told detainee that a dog is held in higher esteem because dogs know right from wrong... 13:00: Dog tricks continued and detainee stated he should be treated like a man... Interrogators showed photos of 9-11 victims and told detainee he should bark happy for these people. Interrogators also showed photos of al Qaeda terrorists and told detainee he should growl at these people. A towel was placed on the detainee’s head like a burka, with his face exposed, and the interrogator proceeded to give the detainee dance lessons... 22:00: The detainee was strip-searched... He stated that he did not like the females viewing his naked body while being searched... (From Sands’ book)

Recent reports suggest that captives, like the Saudi-born Shaker Aamer, is subjected to prolonged solitary confinement in cruel conditions, where he doesn’t even have enough space to perform the obligatory Islamic prayers.

Guantanamo has housed 779 detainees, from ages 13-98, since 11 January 2002. The government data shows that 92 per cent of prisoners were never al Qaeda fighters. As of today, 171 detainees are captive in the prison, of which 89 men are cleared for release but remain in detention — and the yearly expense to keep them is $70 million.

President Barack Obama pledged, in 2009, to shut down the detention camp within the first year of his presidency. Instead, he has signed a law on 31 December 2011 known as the National Defense Authorisation Act that extends indefinite detention to US citizens, moving beyond a policy of denying the anti-torture protections of the Geneva conventions to accused foreigners and towards a policy of denying the habeas corpus protections of the US Constitution to American citizens.

Here is the transcript of my conversation with Mr. Sands on the interrogation techniques used on the captives and the brain behind it:

Fahad Faruqui: Torture Team, what do you mean? And whom are you referring to?

Philippe Sands: It is a story of a select group of lawyers that I have focused on to examine the circumstances in which one detainee — Mohamed al-Qahtani, detainee number 063 at Guantanamo — was subjected to aggressive techniques of interrogation starting in November 2002.

Faruqui: What spurred your interest in the issue of “aggressive” techniques of interrogation and how did you pursue your investigation?

Sands: I started with a single piece of paper, the famous memorandum that Donald Rumsfeld signed on the 2nd of December 2002, where he authorised 15 out of the list 18 techniques of interrogation. I traced back the decision making process. I identified the names of the people who seemed to be involved. And over a period of just over a year tracked them down, sort interviews with them, and sort to get the true story of what had happened not from paper [Haynes memo] but from face-to-face conversation.

Faruqui: What did you discover after speaking to people who were possibly key figures in the decision-making process — ranging from the combatant commander at Guantanamo to the upper-tier in the Bush-led administration?

Sands: What I discovered, in short, was that the official story put forward by the administration that this [request to approve the interrogation techniques] was a bottom up thing in which the administration was simply reacting to “decent people on the ground making a request” was not accurate. In fact, the move to aggressive techniques of interrogation was imposed, if you like, was pressured from the top. And the top included, the very top: president, vice-president [and] secretary of defense [who acted] through their lawyers. And that’s the way in which lawyers assumed a particular responsibility.

Faruqui: How did you conclude that it was not bottom-up?

Sands: There were various indicators, for example, the [Bush-led] administration through Secretary Rumsfeld’s lawyer, Jim Haynes, describes it becoming involved in the upper echelons in November 2002, when the paperwork reached the Pentagon. I then learnt that, in fact, the most senior lawyers of president, vice-president, and secretary of defense had been down in Guantanamo in September 2002. [They were] talking to the lawyer down there and talking to the combatant commander who was head of the interrogations. They talked about interrogations, Military Commission, they viewed an interrogation, and they asked questions about al-Qahtani. They left leaving a message: “Do whatever needs to be done.” And that —when you imagine the power of these individuals — sends a pretty powerful signal. So the idea that somehow the upper echelons became involved only at the end of the process is not, in my view, an accurate account.

Faruqui: Why the interest in coercing information out of these prisoner by using such “aggressive” methods?

Sands: I genuinely believe that there was a perception that with the [first] anniversary of September 11th coming along, they felt real likelihood that there was going to be further attacks. They believed that this man al-Qahtani had information that may avert future attacks. And established reputable techniques of interrogations had not worked. The administration, for understandable reasons, wanted to take steps to protect its population, and they went too far. They abandoned traditional American values [and] traditional American techniques [in US Army Manual of Military Interrogations] in using new techniques that have long been banned in the United States.

But, I think there are other issues that were at play. No one really thought through the policy implications. No one seems to have asked themselves the question: Does this type of interrogation actually produce useful information? No one seems to have asked themselves the question: What is the impact of the turn to cruelty on our relations with our allies and with others?

Faruqui: What role does Geneva conventions — especially Common Article 3 — play in this?

Sands: If you go back to the first decision to settle in this ruling, the decision to set-aside Geneva, it became clear that they saw Geneva as imposing unnecessary constraint on the administration. And they wanted to wipe the slate clean.

Faruqui: Would you briefly talk about the interrogation techniques that were approved by Rumsfeld and, hence, used on al-Qahtani?

Sands: Well, there are three categories of techniques, 18 techniques in all of which 15 were authorised for blanket use, three were left available for non-blanket use that included “waterboarding” so that was not authosized to be used on al-Qahtani in that document.

The 15 techniques appear on the face of it to be innocuous: yelling and shouting. But as you went up the ladder, it moved to things like the use of dogs, the use of extremes of temperature heat and cold, sensory deprivation, noise, nudity, forced grooming which for a person of deep religious beliefs is very problematic, and then one which on its face doesn’t appear problematic is light shoving and poking.

As one of the clinical psychologist who was down at Guantanamo said to me: ‘Imagine light poking and touching coming from a semi-clad female, who is straddling a Muslim detainee who is naked.’ It’s a technique that is deeply troublesome in terms of degradation, humiliation and breaking an individual in that way.

And accumulatively, these techniques used over a period of 54 days [on al-Qahtani] with intense sleep deprivation is designed to break a man. The extraordinary thing about this is that despite the use of these techniques they didn’t seem to have got very much out of them [detainees].

Faruqui: Are these torture techniques, at all, aligned with the Geneva Conventions?

Sands: No. They are plainly incompatible with the Geneva Conventions and that was why the administration had to get rid of Geneva. And they did that on the 7th of February 2002 in the decision from the President [Bush] himself. And the circumstances of that decision was described to me in a very long conversation I had with Doug Feith, who was number three at the Pentagon, head of policy.

At one point, I said to him: Doesn’t it mean Mr Feith, if you got rid of Geneva, you’ve got rid of constraints under those conventions on interrogations and his response was: ‘Precisely that was the point.’ So it was a purposeful decision to set aside those Conventions, partly in order to move towards aggressive interrogations.

Faruqui: How do you feel about those men who were picked-up from bazaars and homes in Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11 and doomed to detention camps such as Guantanamo for years without the right to challenge their detention in US courts?

Sands: I feel very strongly about that and that is not what our societies do. I am very influenced by a rather impressive American diplomat by the name of George Kennan, who in 1947 sent in an anonymous telex back to State Department in the Washington and to paraphrase he basically said:

“The greatest threat we face (referring to Soviet riot) was that we should become like those with whom we are seeking to coupe and when you begin to move to night time secret flying detention, aggressive interrogation, you abandon the techniques and the values that are associated with democracy that function according to constitution principles.

And, though, I am deeply troubled by the effort to move to the “dark side” as President Cheney put it, and I think the experience of last five-years [2003-2008] indicates that the “dark side” does not produce useful results...”

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.