Q&A: Water-boarding

President Barack Obama has banned the practice of waterboarding, an interrogation technique used on three al-Qaeda prisoners under the Bush administration.

Arguments had raged as to whether this technique amounts to torture and should be banned.

Protest against water-boarding in Washington

What is water-boarding ?

Water-boarding involves a prisoner being stretched on his back or hung upside down, having a cloth pushed into his mouth and/or plastic film placed over his face and having water poured onto his face. He gags almost immediately.

Does it come under a technical definition of torture?

Human rights groups and many governments say that it does. The United States government under George W Bush did not agree. But President Obama thinks it is torture and so does his CIA chief Leon Panetta.

Torture is defined by the 1949 UN Convention against Torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person..." in order to get information.

The US is signed up to the Convention. The eighth amendment to the US Constitution banning "cruel and unusual punishment" is also held to prohibit torture.

The US legal code defines torture as an action "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering".

So why did the US use water-boarding?

Because it did not at the time classify water-boarding as torture and regarded it as an effective method in a small number of cases.

It made a distinction between "torture", which it accepted is banned by US and international law, and so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques".

These techniques included not only water-boarding but sleep deprivation, subjection to cold and long periods of standing, and some slapping.

Has President Obama banned waterboarding by all US government agencies, including the CIA?

Yes. He has brought the CIA into line with the US military, which in 2006, in a new army manual on collecting intelligence, banned torture and degrading treatment, including water-boarding, forced nakedness, hooding and sexual humiliation.

The manual's publication followed the scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the passing of the Detainee Treatment Act in 2005, which prohibited the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" of detainees.

President Bush excluded the CIA from the restrictions imposed on the military. He did so in an executive order in July 2007, which sought to define the American commitment to the Geneva Conventions' Common Article 3 prohibition on cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment and torture.

The order declared that a CIA "programme of detention and interrogation" complied with the Geneva Conventions.

The order listed interrogation methods and practices that are not allowed. These ranged all the way from murder and rape to acts of humiliation.

The banned methods did not, however, include the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.

Is water-boarding effective?

According to ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou, al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah "broke" within half a minute. Abu Zubaydah said later that he had made things up to satisfy his interrogators.

However, the New York Times reported on 19 April 2009 that a Justice Department memo revealed that CIA interrogators used the waterboarding technique 183 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted planner of the September 11 attacks, and 83 times on Abu Zubaydah.

The figures undermine the suggestion that the technique produces rapid results.

The arguments about the efficacy of water-boarding reflect all arguments about similar methods. Do they produce information or lies? Can the information be obtained by other means? And are they counter-productive?

How was waterboarding justified legally?

In April 2009, President Obama released a series of legal memos written by lawyers under the Bush administration that sought to justify the use of waterboarding and other methods. One memo, from 2002, contained legal authorisation for a list of specific harsh interrogation techniques, including pushing detainees against a wall, facial slaps, cramped confinement, stress positions and sleep deprivation. The memo also authorised the use of waterboarding and the placing of a detainee into a confined space with an insect.

The memos argued that the methods were not "cruel, inhuman or degrading" under international law.

Will anyone be prosecuted for torture?

President Obama says that those who conducted the interrogations will not be prosecuted. He stated: "Those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice... will not be subject to prosecution." Initially the White House also indicated that those who authorised the techniques would also not face prosecution but after protests from human rights groups and some members of Congress, the president said later that the attorney general would investigate and he would not prejudge the outcome. He also left the door open to a special commission to examine the Bush administration's use of interrogation techniques.

Has there been any defence of waterboarding?

Vice President Cheney said after the release of the memos that other memos showing the "success" of the interrogations using waterboarding and other methods should also be made public. He said he wanted to give the American people "a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was."