9/11 mastermind given waterboard torture 183 times

US justice department documents show that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — who has said he planned the 2001 destruction of New York's World Trade Center — was subjected to the near-drowning technique repeatedly throughout March 2003 in an attempt to obtain information.

The papers also disclose that another al Qaeda leader, Abu Zubaydah, was waterboarded 83 times.

Last week previously confidential memos were published listing the range of practices approved for use by the CIA during President George Bush's time in office. As well as waterboarding, the techniques — all of which have now been outlawed by President Barack Obama — included slamming suspects against false walls, forcing them into small boxes and shackling for long periods.

Some details on the memos were blanked out, but US bloggers have discovered that some of this "hidden" information, including the extent of waterboarding against Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, is visible in one copy from 30 May 2005
The repeated use of waterboarding — and the fact that the amount of water used was far greater than previously thought — will raise questions about assurances given by the Bush administration that strict guidelines were in place to control the use of such tactics.

The US Senate Intelligence Committee has already begun an investigation into the use of the techniques, and how they came to be authorised, although President Obama has ruled out any prosecutions against those who carried out the torture on the grounds that they were following official policy at the time.

The torture of Sheikh Mohammed, who is reported to have admitted to organising up to 30 al Qaeda plots including the 9/11 attacks, followed his capture in Pakistan in March 2003.

He was subsequently transferred to the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2006 and last year appeared before a pre-trial hearing with four other alleged al Qaeda terrorists at which he and his co-defendants indicated that they wanted to plead guilty to charges relating to their role in the September 11 attacks.

Among the other plots which Sheikh Mohammed has reportedly confessed to organising are plans to attack Heathrow, Canary Wharf and Big Ben.

Sheikh Mohammed is also said to have admitted plotting to blow up the Panama Canal and the failed shoebombing of a transatlantic airliner by Londoner Richard Reid, a well as the successful Bali nightclub bombings of 2002 and an attack on a Kenyan hotel in the same year.