Dry-boarding is a torture method that induces the first stages of death by asphyxiation. {{cite news , url = http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/11/hbc-90008305 , title = "Dryboarding" and Three Unexplained Deaths at Guantánamo , work =

Harper's Magazine ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...

, date = 2011-11-09 , accessdate = 2011-11-11 , quote = Al-Marri later told his attorneys that interrogators stuffed a sock in his mouth and taped his lips shut with duct tape. Al-Marri said he loosened the tape; the interrogators taped it more tightly. When he started to choke, the interrogators ripped off the tape. Al-Marri’s attorney in Charleston, Andy Savage, calls this technique 'dryboarding.' , author = Scott Horton , url-status = dead , archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20111112090224/http://harpers.org/archive/2011/11/hbc-90008305 , archivedate = 2011-11-12 , author-link = Scott Horton (attorney) Unlike

waterboarding Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboard ...

, where water is poured on a wet cloth placed over a supine subject's airways, so their breathing slowly fills their lungs with water, dryboarding induces asphyxiation through stuffing the subject's airways with rags, then taping shut their mouth and nose. It is among techniques used by the United States during its war on terror: CIA and military agents under the Bush administration described this as among

enhanced interrogation techniques "Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for the program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S ...

. It has since legally been defined by US courts as torture. Ali Saleh al-Marri, a legal resident of the United States, was arrested while in graduate school. After being classified by the Department of Defense as an

enemy combatant Enemy combatant is a person who, either lawfully or unlawfully, engages in hostilities for the other side in an armed conflict. Usually enemy combatants are members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. In the case ...

, he was held in a Navy brig in the USA. He described to his lawyer that, during his early interrogation, agents stuffed rags down his throat and then taped his mouth and nose shut. His attorney described this procedure as dry-boarding. This material was reported by the press after being received following an eight-year-old FOIA request. When this information was published in 2011, Almerindo Ojeda, the director of the

Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas The Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas (CSHRA, the 'Davis Group') was a university human rights center located at the University of California, Davis. The CSHRA was housed within UC Davis' Hemispheric Institute on the Americas. F ...

, made the connection to the deaths of three detainees on June 10, 2006, at the

Guantanamo Bay detention camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

. At the time, DOD had said each of the men committed

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and ...

, all on the same night. The NCIS investigative report (2008) described the men as having rags stuffed down their throats. Ojeda and the journalists

Tony Bartelme Tony Bartelme, an American journalist and author, is the senior projects reporter for ''The Post and Courier'' in Charleston, South Carolina. He has been a finalist for four Pulitzer Prizes. Biography Bartelme was born in 1963, in Minneapolis, M ...

and Scott Horton said this sounded like dry-boarding. Ojeda expressed skepticism that the men could have committed suicide by stuffing rags down their throats, then tying their hands behind their backs, and suspending themselves by their necks, as described in the NCIS report of 2008 and DOD accounts. He wrote: "It is clear that dryboarding can dispose, single-handedly, of all the questions we have raised thus far."

References

Torture in the United States

See also

References