U.S. Troops and Torture

Here are some new, troubling allegations: [Murat] Kurnaz [a German citizen of Turkish descent] claims his interrogations at Kandahar turned to torture. He told 60 Minutes that American troops held his head underwater.”They used to beat me when my head is underwater. They beat me into my stomach and everything,” he says. “They were hitting you in the stomach while you’re head was underwater so that you’d have to take a breath?” Pelley asks, “Right. I had to drink. I had to…how you say it?” Kurnaz replies. “Inhale. Inhale the water,” Pelley says. “I had to inhale the water. Right,” Kurnaz says. Kurnaz says the Americans used a device to shock him with electricity that made his body go numb. And he says he was hoisted up on chains suspended by his arms from the ceiling of an aircraft hangar for five days. “Every five or six hours they came and pulled me back down. And the doctor came to watch if I can still survive to not. He looked into my eyes. He checked my heart. And when he said okay, then they pulled me back up,” Kurnaz says. “The point of the doctor’s visit was not to treat you. It was to see if you could take another six hours hanging from the ceiling?” Pelley asks. “Right,” Kurnaz says. “I suspect you know that the U.S. military will deny this happened. The U.S. military will deny that you were shocked. It will deny your head was held in a bucket of water. It will deny that you hung from a ceiling for days at a time,” Pelley remarks. “Doesn’t matter whatever they will say. The truth will not change,” Kurnaz says. Not surprisingly, he was guilty of nothing.