Rectal rehydration and waterboarding: the CIA torture report's grisliest findings

Parts of the CIA interrogation programme were known, but the catalogue of abuse is nightmarish, especially knowing much more will never be revealed

The full horror of the CIA interrogation and detention programmes launched in the wake of the September 11 terror attack was laid bare in the long-awaited Senate report released on Tuesday.

While parts of the programme had been known - and much more will never be revealed - the catalogue of abuse is nightmarish and reads like something invented by the Marquis de Sade or Hieronymous Bosch.

Detainees were forced to stand on broken limbs for hours, kept in complete darkness, deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, sometimes standing, sometimes with their arms shackled above their heads.

Prisoners were subjected to "rectal feeding" without medical necessity. Rectal exams were conducted with "excessive force". The report highlights one prisoner later diagnosed with anal fissures, chronic hemorrhoids and "symptomatic rectal prolapse".

The report mentions mock executions and Russian roulette. US agents threatened to slit the throat of a detainee's mother, sexually abused another and threatened prisoners' children. One prisoner died of hypothermia brought on in part by being forced to sit on a bare concrete floor without pants.

The dungeon

The CIA began the establishment of a specialised detention centre, codenamed DETENTION SITE COBALT, in April 2002. Although its location is not identified in the report it has been widely identified as being in Afghanistan. Conditions at the site were described in the report as poor "and were especially bleak early in the program".

The CIA chief of interrogations described COBALT as "a dungeon".

There were 20 cells, with blacked-out windows. Detainees were "kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud music and only a bucket to use for human waste". It was cold, something the report says likely contributed to the death of a detainee.

Prisoners were walked around naked or were shackled with their hands above their heads for extended periods of time. About five CIA officers would engage in what is described as a "rough takedown".

A detainee would be shouted at, have his clothes cut off, be secured with tape, hooded and dragged up and down a long corridor while being slapped and punched.

A CIA photograph shows a waterboard at the site, surrounded by buckets and a bottle of an unknown pink solution and a watering can resting on the beams of the waterboard.

The CIA failed to provide a detailed explanation of the items in the photograph.

At COBALT, the CIA interrogated in 2002 Gul Rahman, described as a suspected Islamic extremist. He was subjected to "48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower and rough treatment".