• Human Rights Watch report challenges George W. Bush's claim that only three al Qaeda suspects were waterboarded
  
• Terror suspects allegedly not allowed to bathe for three months
• Opponents of Colonel Gadhafi said to have been handed to Libya with only 'thin assurances' they would not be tortured

By Associated Press Reporter

PUBLISHED: 09:53 EST, 6 September 2012 | UPDATED: 10:03 EST, 6 September 2012

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2199246/Waterboard-widespre...

Waterboarding at CIA-run prisons was more widespread than has been acknowledged, a damning human rights group report claimed today.

New details of brutal treatment by Bush-era interrogators included how terror suspects were not allowed to bathe for three months.

The report by Human Rights Watch also paints a more complete picture of Washington's close cooperation with the regime of Libya's former dictator Moammar Gadhafi in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Allies: The damning report claims the U.S. authorities handed Colonel Gadhafi his enemies on a silver platter

The U.S. handed over to Libya the Islamist opponents of Gadhafi that it detained abroad with only thin ‘diplomatic assurances’ that they would not be mistreated, and several of them were subsequently tortured in prison, Human Rights Watch said.

The 154-page report features interviews by the New York-based group with 14 Libyan dissident exiles. They describe systematic abuses while they were held in U.S.-led detention centers in Afghanistan – some for as long as two years – or in U.S.-led interrogations in Pakistan, Morocco, Thailand, Sudan and elsewhere before the Americans handed them over to Libya.

‘Not only did the U.S. deliver (Gadhafi) his enemies on a silver platter, but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first, said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

‘The scope of the Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged,’ she said.

The report comes days after the Justice Department announced it would not bring criminal charges against any CIA personnel over severe interrogation methods used in the detention and rendition program.

Investigators said they could not prove any interrogators went beyond guidelines authorized by the Bush administration.

Rights activists and some Obama administration officials say even the authorized techniques constituted torture, though the CIA and Bush administration argue they do not.

Any new instances of waterboarding, however, would go beyond the three that the CIA has said were authorized. READ MORE HERE>>