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President Trump’s Administration Backs Away From Plan To Reopen CIA ‘Black Sites’
The US media has reported that the Trump administration will not proceed with the plans to reopen the infamous CIA prisons to interrogate suspects.
A report issued by the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/us/politics/black-site-prisons-cia-terrorist.html?_r=0 revealed that the White House has made a decision to abandon the plans on reopening ‘black site’ prisons. This move was revealed by unnamed officials who revealed the change of plans as they cited a revised draft of an executive order on US detention policy.
Titled “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants”, the first draft was released last week by WikiLeaks. The document which has been widely circulated in the media also revealed that the Obama’s intention to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba was also cancelled as it also called for a review of overseas CIA interrogation programs that were discontinued by Obama.
The new draft seems to have abandoned the idea of reopening the path to CIA black sites and changes to interrogation rules.
The US media was quick to unearth President Trump’s statements that appear to justify the so-called enhanced interrogation practices such as fighting fire with fire, which President Trump said when he was asked about the idea of reintroducing waterboarding to interrogate terrorist detainees.
President Trump made it clear that he would only pursue reintroducing torture techniques for interrogation, like waterboarding or worse, if it is what Defense Secretary James Mattis and the CIA Director Mike Pompeo advised. Defense Secretary James Mattis has been on the record as being against waterboarding, while Pompeo defended it in the past, however, he’s said that he would not revive the technique.
The infamous “black site’’ prisons were used by the CIA in conducting torture techniques, the prisons were operated under President George W. Bush to detain terrorist suspects after the occurrence of the 9/11 attacks.
President Barrack Obama signed an executive order back in 2009 stating that the CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it operated and prohibited the operation of such detention facilities.