Here's a drawing of a torture box the US used to interrogate Gaddafi's enemies in Libya

Over at Wired News, Spencer Ackerman points to one grisly detail in a lengthy report just released by Human Rights Watch, about how the US cooperated with the Gadhafi regime in Libya:

This is a drawing of a locked box which a Libyan man says U.S. interrogators once stuffed him into. It’s said to be about three feet long on each side. Only once during his two years in detention was the detainee put in the box; his confinement there lasted over an hour. The circles are small holes, into which his interrogators “prodded him with long thin objects.”
It wasn’t the only box that the CIA allegedly placed him inside. Another was a tall, narrow box, less than two feet wide, with handcuffs at the top. The detainee, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed al-Shoroeiya, says he was placed into that one with his hands elevated and suspended by the handcuffs, for a day and a half, naked, with music blasting into his ears constantly through speakers built into the box. A different detainee describes being placed into a similar box for three days and being left with no choice but to urinate and defecate on himself.

The box was "only the start" of this man's woes, as the CIA then delivered him and at least four others to Gadhafi's strongmen, who then tortured him even more brutally for the crime of political opposition.

The Human Rights Watch report documents the stories of those detainees, and illustrates how the CIA “works with unsavory regimes.”

Commenting on the HRW report, a CIA spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal it was considered routine for our government to work with the Gadhafi regime at the time.

By 2004, the CIA had convinced Mr. Gadhafi to give up his weapons of mass destruction and back U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. "It can't come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats," she said. "That is exactly what we are expected to do."

From HRW, an overview of the report contents:

This report is based on interviews conducted in Libya with 14 former detainees, most of whom belonged to an armed Islamist group that had worked to overthrow Gaddafi for 20 years. Many members of the group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), joined the NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi rebels in the 2011 conflict. Some of those who were rendered and allegedly tortured in US custody now hold key leadership and political positions in the country.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Boundegar

If Americans do it, it isn’t torture. It’s freedom. I thought we settled that back in 2004?
- Daniel Perry
  
  it would seem that way
- http://twitter.com/frederikvdz Frederik
  
  That works for allot of things, Invasion = Surprise Freedom, Torture = Freedom Therapy.
  - Boundegar
    
    And pommes frites = Freedom Fries! This is a good game.
    - http://twitter.com/frederikvdz Frederik
      
      Bailouts/tax breaks = Freedom Funding, protest surpression = Freedom Promotion.
  - Felton / Moderator
    
    So the device above must be called a Freedom Box.
    - SomeGuyNamedMark
      
      Orwell is proud of you all
    - http://twitter.com/frederikvdz Frederik
      
      That’s a little on the nose, how about Freedom Emancipation Case, comes with a lock; the Freedom Emancipation Case Enhancer.
    - wysinwyg
      
      “Come on freedom cage! Roll me to safety!”
      -Philip Fry
- benher
  
  So the Freedom Tower is really… Torture Tower?(tm) Awesome!!
- blissfulight
  
  We should call them Freedom Boxes.
http://www.nothinginside.net mindysan33

Gross. And evil. But that’s progress, marching across the faces of the powerless.
- deepthroatb
  
  And we’ve progressed to where?
  - travtastic
    
    Well, we developed the famous Torture Box.
DaveVonNatick

“The CIA then delivered him to Gadhafi’s strongmen, who then tortured him even more brutally for the crime of political opposition.”
–
See^^ we were less brutal than the Gadhafi strongmen. That proves we’re the good guys, right?
tsa

The US didn’t do that. That would be immoral. The Libyans did it for them, which makes it good.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Evil by proxy
gwailo_joe

Hey, look! The box has air holes! That’s pretty humane, right?

Except for the poking part…
- bcsizemo
  
  Honestly I’m a bit shocked they just didn’t combine water boarding with the Freedom Box…like drowning for witches.
SomeGuyNamedMark

Even soulless fanatical sadists need jobs. Thanks CIA.

“Some of those who were rendered and allegedly tortured in US custody now hold key leadership and political positions in the country.”

I wonder if when the US inevitably comes knocking to set up a CIA branch in Libya if they’ll have to deal with these people. “Hi, remember me? I was the guy who waterboarded you until you crapped yourself.”
howaboutthisdangit

Job security for spooks. That is how they ensure another generation of enemies.
Bodhipaksa

“They’ll welcome us with open bowels.”
Agile Cyborg

What better way to keep young men and women excited to engage in the bidding of their homeland entertained?
Ipo

I’ve spent hours in similar boxes owned by a branch of the federal government.

The part that gets neglected to be mentioned here is that while this IS TORTURE [It certainly felt like it!], it isn’t even meant to be torture but a convenient way to transport prisoners who don’t have access to state or federal courts or the outside world.

I was transported in small aluminum boxes on the floors of white vans. Although at the time I didn’t know that, I was taken across several states and into a different time zone in this manner.
Nobody knew.

From my experience, I would say that the periodic “poking” through the holes was not to torture the fellow victim, but “prodding” to see if he was conscious and alive. Which is not a given.

The backs of these vans are not air-conditioned.
The July outside temperature in SC GA and AL [rarely below 110F /45C], put the inside climate well into the sauna range. It got really scary after an hour or two. Really scary.
As if that summer heat wasn’t enough, parts of the aluminum box’s bottom got blistering hot from, I think, the exhaust catalyst right under the van’s bare metal floor. I’m not easily scared. I was very scared. Those are very small boxes and I’m over 6 feet tall.

A woman in the next box over passed out vomiting. We worried for her life, unable to help at all through quarter dollar sized holes.
There were 5 more boxed people in that van. We yelled and hammered with our fists onto the metal to get that agent’s attention.
After a few minutes he asked through the speaker what we wanted.
We told him of the lady choking on her vomit.
He turned the mike off and continued driving for hours.
When some of us were taken out of the van, which took off with the woman still on board, she hadn’t moved in a long time.
Nobody even bothered to prod with a stick.
There is no way to ever find out what happened to her. If she lived.

But they didn’t do this to us because they wanted to know our secrets.
Nobody asked anything.
They just did it because containering is the most efficient way to transport dehumanized prisoners.
Those boxes are shipping and storage containers.
And I’m not sure which is worse.
- silkox
  
  It seems like someone should say something here. I’m glad you made it out.
http://profile.yahoo.com/OMHO6ER5QJE3SIZ35VAXIRCLYM Stephan

Hey US, how does it feel down there with Saudi Arabia and Iran among others?
- Boundegar
  
  Not very good, to be honest. I keep telling myself it’s a drawing of a sheep.
Mark_Frauenfelder

The problem with today’s generation of torture box designers is that they don’t have a good grasp of perspective drawing.
- travtastic
  
  But CAD takes care of all that now, geezer! Get in the trapezoidal box already!
http://twitter.com/knoxkp karl knox

I think now’s the time to start chanting USA, USA, USA!
Lelielle

Ugh, I feel kinda bad that the first thing I thought of looking at that drawing was “The Little Prince” “I asked you to draw me a picture of a Libyan prisoner” “that is a Libyan prisoner, he’s just inside the torture box”
buddy66

Ipo, I don’t know what your offense was, alleged or otherwise, but that was cruel and inhumane treatment; and once again, with almost boring regularity, I am ashamed for the United States government.
- Ipo
  
  My offense was to be accused of a crime while living as an American since youth, without the required [and unobtainable] paperwork.
  While being an undocumented alien one does not have the rights granted to citizens.
  If the maximum sentence for the crime one is accused of is two years or more of imprisonment, ICE considers one convicted.
  Which somehow turned me into some kind of federal high security prisoner.
  For a few weeks the feds rented a space for me in the max wing of some jail. I had to eat with the murderers, with the side effect that everybody was very polite with me. In jail murderers are teh kewl.
  I was transported away from there by ICE and by federal marshals.
  I don’t know whose boxes they were.
  
  My citizen-wife and I live in Europe now.
  Immigration procedure for my wife took about as much effort as renewing a drivers license.
  I feel that living in Europe is not as good as living in America used to be, but in some ways much better than living in America is now*.
  We’ll go back someday anyhow.
  
  *I’m not in GB .