Wellington, New Zealand’s intelligence agencies received information from detainees who were subjected to torture by the US’ CIA during the war in Afghanistan and even provided questions for interrogations, according to an official report released on Monday.
Madeleine Laracy of the Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, clarified, however, that the New Zealand agencies “were not complicit or otherwise involved in torture or ill-treatment of detainees” during the US’ detention and rendition program in Afghanistan between 2001-2009, Efe news reported.
Laracy analyzed whether the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) were complicit in the CIA’s illegal activities.
According to the report, both agencies, though mainly the NZSIS, received “many intelligence reports obtained from detainees who, it was subsequently revealed, had been subject to torture.”
“On one occasion, the NZSIS asked the CIA questions for a detainee,” the report found.
“While the NZSIS was not aware that detainee interrogations involved torture, it was known that the individual was being held by the CIA in an undisclosed location,” the report added, before stressing that these activities were considered unlawful in New Zealand and under international law.
Investigations began a year after the US Senate Intelligence Committee issued a critical report in 2014 on CIA activities during the war in Afghanistan.
The document analyzed the use of controversial interrogation processes, which included torture, on suspects and members of the Al Qaeda terror network held in secret facilities in Europe and Asia for eight years after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
