THIS is apropos the CIA torture report released by the US Senate committee about some of the techniques employed by the agency to interrogate terror suspects after Sept 11.

It affirmed that detainees had been deprived of sleep for even more than a week, water-boarded, force-fed, sexually humiliated, beaten and mentally tortured, including being threatened to have one’s mother raped in front of one.

The report also confirmed that information extracted through these techniques had not helped stop any major attack or arrest any major suspect.

What is worse is that it is only seven per cent of the actual report and the rest remains classified and what it contains is surely worse than what has been disclosed. A harder question that remains is: how many of these techniques have actually been used against Dr Aafia Siddiqui?

President Barack Obama has already made it clear that those involved in the torture programme will not be punished and the Republicans have even refused to acknowledge much of the report. Therefore, the threat of all this being repeated in the future is imminent.

Hence, one may ask in what way the US security apparatus is different from the so-called Islamic State.

Liaqat Qazi

Panjgur

(2)

THIS refers to your editorial ‘CIA’s badge of shame’ (Dec 10). As a democratic Canadian pacifist of Pakistani origin, I am simply flabbergasted at the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s assessment of the excesses committed by the CIA against the suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib detention centres.

You are right in asking some of the following questions: why was a stringent investigation not undertaken earlier? Why were the excesses not brought under control?

The above questions must convincingly be answered by the current US administration for the sake of credibility.

Jalaluddin S. Hussain

Bergevin, Canada

Published in Dawn December 14th , 2014