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The document provides a step-by-step manual for extraordinary renditions.
The process starts with "capture shock." The detainee is subject to a medical examination prior to his flight. During the flight, the detainee is securely shackled, and is deprived of sight and sound through the use of blindfolds, earmuffs and hoods.
The detainee is "in the complete control of Americans." The detainee is stripped naked and shaved. A "series of photographs are taken of the HVD while nude." A medical officer and a psychologist play key roles in the process (though their professional ethics rules would prohibit such conduct.)
All of these practices are carefully engineered to facilitate the interrogation process. Nudity, sleep deprivation and dietary manipulation are used as standard preparatory steps. It then details the standard "corrective techniques:" these are a series of physical assaults labeled with innocuous titles like insult slap, abdominal slap, facial hold and attention grasp. "Coercive techniques" used include: walling (slamming a prisoner's head against the wall, with some protective measures to avoid severe injuries), water dousing, the use of the stress position (known to the inquisition as the strapado, to the Germans in World War II as Pfahlbinden), wall standing (referred to by the NKVD and KGB as stoika) and cramped confinement. Because of substantial redactions, it seems unlikely that this list is complete.
None of this information is surprising. In fact it all tallies perfectly with the description of the renditions program that can be derived from the report prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which used the appropriate legal designation for these techniques: "torture." ...
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