ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 1997 TAG: 9701290049
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
THE ORGANIZATION contends that CIA training manuals were used to instruct interrogators to mistreat prisoners.
The human rights group Amnesty International called Tuesday for an independent investigation into the origin and use of CIA training manuals that instructed interrogators on the use of torture and other forms of coercion.
``Clearly the creation, use and dissemination of these manuals raises troubling and disturbing questions about the U.S. commitment to human rights,'' said Carlos Salinas, a Latin America advocate in the group's Washington office.
Those responsible for the documents need to be held accountable, Salinas said. ``This accountability needs to be established by a thorough, independent investigation establishing who was instructed to do what and when.''
Amnesty International is a long-established human rights organization known for campaigning against inhumane treatment of political prisoners worldwide.
The CIA released two interrogation training manuals last week after The Baltimore Sun, pursuing a 2-year-old Freedom of Information Act request, threatened to sue the agency.
One, titled ``Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983,'' discusses inflicting pain or threatening pain, inducing dread, depriving prisoners of food and sleep, making them maintain rigid positions for long periods, stripping them naked, and keeping them blindfolded or in prolonged solitary confinement.
This manual, used in Latin America during the early 1980s, appears to have been compiled from training courses given to members of the Honduran military.
The second document, a 1963 manual called ``KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation,'' contains similar instructions, plus references to electric shock. Some members of the intelligence community believe that it formed a basis for the later manual.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said Tuesday that the agency now opposes such inhumane treatment.
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