Torture by another name: CIA used 'water dousing' on at least 12 detainees

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/oct/16/cia-torture-water-dousing-waterboard-like-technique



Those familiar with the cases of the 13 men known to have experienced water dousing say its departure from waterboarding is ‘a distinction without a difference’.

Torture by another name: CIA used 'water dousing' on at least 12 detainees
Spencer Ackerman in New York
Friday 16 October 2015 07.07 EDT

At least a dozen more people were subjected to waterboard-like tactics in CIA custody than the agency has admitted, according to a fresh accounting of the US government’s most discredited form of torture.

The CIA maintains it only subjected three detainees to waterboarding. But agency interrogators subjected at least 12 others to a similar technique, known as “water dousing”, that also created a drowning sensation or chilled a person’s body temperature – sometimes through “immersion” in water, and often without use of a board.

New lawsuits, recently released documents and the Senate’s landmark torture report indicate that at least 13 men in total experienced “water dousing”. Those familiar with their cases and an interrogator cited in the Senate report consider water dousing’s departure from waterboarding to be “a distinction without a difference”.

Water dousing, however, added an element of hypothermia. Some detainees reported their CIA captors dousing them with “cold or refrigerated” water, then wrapping them in similarly frigid sheets of plastic, keeping their temperatures low.