There are reports circulating this evening that the CIA willingly used a hit song performed by the Irish boyband Westlife to torture a man they were interrogating in Afghanistan.
The news has come after the civil liberties group filed a lawsuit against the CIA Psychologists who designed and carried out the mental torture program.
It is understood that three former CIA prisoners represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit recently against two Psychologists that work for the CIA named James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen. The lawsuit comes after one of the three former CIA prisoners Gul Rahman had recently died as a result of the torture he was subjected to.
Meanwhile the ACLU claims that the mental torture methods devised by Mitchell and Jessen had an adverse effect on the three men, who were allegedly slammed into walls, stuffed into coffin-like boxes. The ACLU also claim the men were exposed to extreme temperatures and ear-splitting levels of music, starved, water tortured, sleep deprived for a number of days, the men were also allegedly chained in awkward positions designed to cause pain and to keep them awake for days on end.
The ACLU, has claimed the actions deployed by the CIA were severely barbaric, and it has prompted them file an 82-page complaint against the two accused Mitchell and Jessen in federal court in Washington State.
It is believed the submitted court documents outline how Suleiman Abdullah Salim a Tanzanian citizen , one of the plantiffs in the case, was captured in Somalia, where he was working as a fisherman and trader, and how the CIA brought him to Kenya before being transferred to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, where he would spend five weeks. He arrived at the facility “shackled, handcuffed, blindfolded, and in headphones”. The file stated that Suleiman Abdullah Salim received severe toture afterwards, it said: “After his headphones, hood, and earplugs were removed, he was overwhelmed by ear-splitting noise: loud western pop-music sometimes interrupted by a mixture of cacophonous sounds like yowling and the clanging of bells,”
While the current court documents do not identify the music played, the ACLU claim that the CIA played a Westlife to torture Mr Salim.
A brief statement on the ACLU website read: “The CIA used the music of an Irish boyband called Westlife to torture Suleiman Abdullah in Afghanistan,” “His interrogators would intersperse a syrupy song called “My Love” with heavy metal, played on repeat at ear-splitting volume,”
Mr Salim was subsequently handed over to the US military afterwards, before being released in 2008, five years after his abduction. Salim was issued with a letter acknowledging that he poses no threat to the United States. He now lives in Zanzibar with his wife and three-year-old daughter.