waterboarding

waterboarding, method of torture in which water is poured into the nose and mouth of a victim who lies on his back on an inclined platform, with his feet above his head. As the victim’s sinus cavities and mouth fill with water, his gag reflex causes him to expel air from his lungs, leaving him unable to exhale and unable to inhale without aspirating water. Although water usually enters the lungs, it does not immediately fill them, owing to their elevated position with respect to the head and neck. In this way the victim can be made to drown for short periods without suffering asphyxiation. The victim’s mouth and nose are often covered with a cloth, which allows water to enter but prevents it from being expelled; alternatively, his mouth may be covered with cellophane or held shut for this purpose. The torture is eventually halted and the victim put in an upright position to allow him to cough and vomit (water usually enters the esophagus and stomach) or to revive him if he has become unconscious, after which the torture may be resumed. Waterboarding produces extreme physical suffering and an uncontrollable feeling of panic and terror, usually within seconds.

Waterboarding in various forms has been practiced for centuries. It was used by the Spanish Inquisition from the 16th century, by Dutch traders against the British in the 17th century, during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), by the U.S. Army in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War (1898), by the Japanese Army during World War II, and by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (1975–78). As a form of torture, waterboarding became illegal under the law of war with the adoption of the third Geneva Convention of 1929, which required that prisoners of war be treated humanely, and the third and fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which explicitly prohibited the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners of war and civilians, respectively. On the basis of the 1929 convention the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE; 1946–48) convicted 25 Japanese leaders of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, specifically including torture by waterboarding (referred to by the IMTFE as the “water treatment”).

Following the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, the U.S. Department of Justice under the George W. Bush administration issued secret opinions (in 2002 and 2005) finding that waterboarding and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques did not constitute torture. On the basis of the 2002 opinion (subsequently rescinded), it authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to use such techniques against suspected terrorists held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret prisons in other countries. In 2002–03 the CIA repeatedly waterboarded three captured members of al-Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist organization responsible for the attacks. After the agency publicly confirmed its use of waterboarding in 2005, members of the Bush administration defended the technique as legal and necessary and insisted that it had yielded valuable intelligence regarding al-Qaeda’s membership and operations. Critics in the United States and abroad charged that waterboarding was illegal under domestic and international law, that it is generally unreliable because the victim will say anything to make it stop, that the information it had produced was already known, and that its use had damaged the country’s reputation as a defender of human rights.