The US House of Representatives approved a bill on Thursday to
prohibit the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from using
"waterboarding" and other harsh tactics to interrogate terrorist
suspects.
Demonstrator Maboud
Ebrahimzadeh is held down during a simulation of waterboarding
outside the Justice Department in Washington Nov. 5,
2007.
Being voted 222-199, the intelligence bill was sent to the
Senate and will take effect should President George W. Bush sign
it.
Among the bill's provisions that were made public, one requires
reporting to the committees on whether intelligence agency
employees are complying with protections for detainees from cruel,
inhumane and degrading treatment. Another provision requires a
report on the use of private contractors in intelligence work.
As the first intelligence authorization conference bill Congress
has presented in three years, the bill also suspended 70 percent of
the intelligence budget spending in 2008 until the House and Senate
intelligence committees are briefed on Israel's Sept. 6 air strike
on an alleged nuclear site in Syria.
It also requires the creation of a new internal watchdog to
oversee all the intelligence agencies.
The bill was approved days after CIA Director Michael Hayden
testified at Congress hearings on the agency's destruction of
interrogating videotapes, reviving debate whether CIA was trying to
cover torture on terrorist suspects including waterboarding.
However, the White House threatened to veto the bill this week,
noting that they disagree with more than 11 areas of the bill,
especially opposing restricting the CIA to interrogation methods
approved by the US military in 2006.
(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2007)
