Media News - Thursday, July 03, 2008

British journalist submits to waterboarding

British-American writer Christopher Hitchens voluntarily submitted to waterboarding and concluded that the controversial interrogation technique used by the CIA is torture, he said in a magazine article published Wednesday. Hitchens said in the Vanity Fair article that he contacted members of the US special forces who train soldiers in how to resist torture in order to experience waterboarding, the simulated drowning technique which the Central Intelligence Agency in February acknowledged it used on three top terror suspects. The journalist and author described how - at the request of his editors - he ventured to an unnamed rural location in the southeastern US state of North Carolina where agents put a hood over his head, bound his feet, cuffed his hands to a belt, and strapped him to a wooden board positioned with his head lower than his heart. The agents then draped a towel over his face and began pouring water onto it for several seconds before Hitchens signaled them to stop. 'Believe me, it's torture,' read Hitchens' headline on the Vanity Fair website. Photographs and video of Hitchens' experience and a subsequent interview with the writer were posted on the magazine's website. Hitchens, who was an ardent supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, concluded his article stating his opposition to the use of waterboarding by the United States. (AFP)

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