People & Power

Rendition Revisited

Will the Trump administration sanction a return to some of the darkest days of the so-called war on terror?

Scroll down for Part I

Former senior military personnel have warned that the United States could be about to re-introduce a programme of torture outlawed by the then President, Barack Obama, in 2009.

Following the 9/11 attacks, a covert CIA programme led to individuals being abducted and subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation, techniques including sleep deprivation, wall-slamming and waterboarding.

Current President Donald Trump has stated that torture works, he would bring back waterboarding, and “if we can, we should have worse”. He has also pledged to keep the notorious Guantanamo detention facility open.

READ: The morality of torture: A toxic legacy, by Sarah Spiller

Speaking to Al Jazeera, insiders who served in the Bush era say they fear this could all mean a resumption of the brutal treatment meted out to US captives after 2002.

“You have President Trump, who is enamoured with torture, who has a thirst for brutality,” says Mark Fallon, a former counterintelligence officer at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. “I’m afraid that we’re setting the conditions to return back to practices of brutality and state-sponsored torture.”

In this special two-part People & Power report, filmmakers Sarah Spiller, Callum Macrae and Mark Williams set out to investigate whether President Trump’s administration will sanction a return to some of the darkest days of the so-called war on terror.

READ: Trump, the CIA and the future of torture, by Sarah Spiller