BRIEF: Ridge: Waterboarding is Torture

WASHINGTON, United States - Tom Ridge, who served from 2003 to 2005 as the first secretary of homeland security, argued in a recent interview that the controversial ‘enhanced coercive interrogation technique’, waterboarding, qualifies as torture.  “There’s just no doubt in my mind – under any set of rules, waterboarding is torture…I believe, unlike others in the administration, that waterboarding was, is and will always be torture.  That’s a simple statement.” 

US government officials claim that Michael Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), banned the use of waterboarding in interrogations in 2006.

For more information, please see:

The New York Times – Former Secretary on Waterboarding – 19 January 2008

Georgetown University - Exploring International Law – 19 January 2008

Waterboarding.org – What Waterboarding Is

YouTube – Waterboarding Instructions