Detainee Zubaydah a Key Figure in Senate Report

BY STEPHEN BRAUN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation program depicts terror detainee Abu Zubaydah as the agency’s guinea pig in the development of information-mining tactics that critics cite as torture.

The report says Zubaydah was the first major al Qaida terror suspect subjected to white noise and sleep deprivation tactics, as well as the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding and was brutalized by the process.

The Senate report cites Zubaydah’s ordeal in CIA-run black prison sites as a key turning point in the Bush administration’s tough legal approach to terror suspects and the CIA’s arsenal of now-outlawed interrogation tactics. The report says that while CIA officials subjected Zubaydah to a growing array of harsh interrogations, Bush legal officials wrote memos using him as a test case to justify the extreme measures.