US' own officials decry shame in Guantanamo

Seven US military officials who heard graphic descriptions late last month of the brutal treatment of a terrorist while in CIA custody after the Sept 11 attacks called his treatment by the agency "a source of shame for the US government".

The high-ranking officers, members of an eight-man jury at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, went there for the sentencing of Majid Khan, 41, a Baltimore high school graduate who had earlier pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. Khan was handed a sentence of 26 years.

Before sentencing, Khan spent two hours describing how he was tortured by CIA agents. The panel that listened to him submitted a scathing handwritten letter that urged clemency on his behalf to an official who will review the case.

In the letter, first obtained by The New York Times, the officials wrote:"Mr Khan was subjected to physical and psychological abuse well beyond approved enhanced interrogation techniques, instead being closer to torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history. ... The treatment of Mr Khan in the hands of US personnel should be a source of shame for the US government."

Khan told how he was locked in prisons that resembled a dungeon, by CIA agents in Pakistan, Afghanistan and another country that wasn't named. He was isolated, subjected to sexual abuse and was stripped naked and shackled.

He said that he was first captured in March 2003 in Pakistan, after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, Virginia and Pennsylvania that claimed 2,977 lives. He said he was repeatedly interrogated, beaten, abused and tortured.

In the months that followed the attacks, the CIA set up so-called black sites overseas where suspected terrorists were harshly interrogated for information on al-Qaida.

Khan is the first of those held at a black site to talk about what he endured. At least 100 other suspected terrorists are believed to have been tortured.

CIA officers used several "enhanced interrogation techniques" including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and torture as part of the program to get information on al-Qaida's plans.