The Armed Services Committee report goes on to say that interrogation techniques for Bagram were gleaned from Guantanamo during a two-day visit there in October 2002 by SMU TF members. The visit took place "just as the [Joint Task Force-170 stationed at Guantanamo] were finalizing a request submitted to SOUTHCOM...to use interrogation techniques including stress positions, removal of clothing, deprivation of light and auditory stimuli, hooding, use of detainee phobias such as dogs, exposure to cold weather or water, and non-injurious contact such as grabbing, poking and pushing."
Daliwar and Habibullah were subjected to a combination of those techniques, such as stress positions and hooding, and that played a major role in their deaths, the Armed Services Committee report concluded.
In late October, the SMU TF returned to Afghanistan and a proposal was made to the SMU Commander there. SMU TF "outlined a rationale"- for conducting its own interrogations at Bagram.
They recommended the "imaginative but legal use of non-lethal psychological techniques (i.e., battlefield noises/chaos, barking dogs, etc.)" as well as stress techniques such as "sensory deprivation (hoods, silence, flex cuffs), sensory overload (shouting, gun shots, white noise, machinery noise) and manipulation of the environment (hot, cold, wet. windy, hard surfaces)."
SMU TF also proposed to Lt. General Dan McNeil, the commander of the Joint Task Force-180, building an interrogation facility for "high-value" detainees co-located at the Bagram Collection Point, where Daliwar and Habibullah were held and interrogated.
When the New York Times revealed in 2005 that Dilawar and Habibullah's were tortured to death, McNeil was quoted denying reports that the detainees were chained by their wrists to the ceilings in their prison cells.
"The briefing stated that CJTF-180 was focused on the detention mission rather than the interrogation mission, that 'no advanced interrogation techniques including sensory deprivation/overload, sleep deprivation, psychological manipulation' were employed by CJTF-180, and that current procedures were having only limited success[es]," the report says.
"While the SMU briefing noted that "advanced interrogation techniques'" were not in use at Bagram prior to November 2002, Army investigations into the deaths of two detainees at Bagram in early December revealed that, by early December 2002, at least one of the techniques, sleep deprivation, was apparently in wide use there."
The report noted that on Nov. 1, 2002, "a month before the two detainee deaths at Bagram, the [Special Forces Task Force] Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) analyzed legal authorities and constraints relevant to [Special Mission Unit Task Force] personnel's participation in interrogations."
The staff judge advocate's analysis "is reflected in a memo which was provided to the Committee in redacted form," the report says. "Although the particular interrogation techniques in use [at Bagram] were redacted from the version of the memo shared with the Committee, unredacted portions of that memo discuss the [Special Mission Unit Task Force] concerns about those techniques.
"Although the memo stated that while, in the author's opinion, "none of the interrogation techniques used or observed by [redacted] personnel constitutes 'torture,'" it also stated that "another observer might disagree.'"
In addition, the memo stated that one of the [redacted] techniques "could rise to the level of torture if applied in such a way and for such a period of time that it rises to the level of severe physical pain or suffering.. It also said, "Although the interrogation techniques may not constitute 'torture' they may rise to the level of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment proscribed by international law."
On Nov. 28, 2002 Habibullah, an Islamic Mullah, was taken to Bagram by CIA operatives. (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
"The communication between Mr. Habibullah and his jailers appears to have been almost exclusively physical," according to the 2005 New York Times report.
The Armed Services Committee report does not describe the brutal beatings he endured for the six days he was interrogated and detained at the prison facility.
But an autopsy attributed his death on Dec. 4, 2002 to a pulmonary embolism, "a blood clot dislodged by the beatings he'd received," McClatchy Newspapers reported last year.
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