Rights group asks Germany to arrest CIA deputy director

BERLIN -- A civil-rights group is asking German authorities to issue an arrest warrant for the recently appointed deputy director of the CIA over claims she oversaw the torture of terrorism suspects 15 years ago.

The not-for-profit European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights submitted a legal brief to German federal prosecutors Tuesday, alleging Gina Haspel allowed the waterboarding of prisoners at a secret U.S. detention center in Thailand.

The prosecutor's office confirmed Wednesday the complaint had been received and was being reviewed. Similar complaints against senior U.S. officials in the past haven't resulted in arrest warrants.

Advocates describe waterboarding as a form of "enhanced interrogation." Critics say it amounts to torture, because prisoners are made to feel they are drowning.

Haspel was the first female career CIA officer selected to be deputy director in February.

The submission by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights -- seen by The Associated Press -- centers mainly on the case of Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi citizen and senior al-Qaeda member who was among scores of Islamic extremists detained worldwide in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Drawing on media reports and congressional testimony, attorneys for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights allege Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002 while Haspel was in charge of a detention facility in Thailand known as Cat's Eye base or Detention Site Green.

The submission identifies two CIA contractors, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, as the only people authorized to have contact with Zubaydah during that time and claims they were answerable to Haspel.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Mitchell and Jessen on behalf of three men who say they were tortured using techniques the psychologists designed.

A U.S. Senate investigation in 2014 found their interrogation techniques produced no useful intelligence in the so-called war on terror, but some former intelligence officials said the techniques have produced valuable intelligence.

"For the purposes of determining criminal liability, what is most relevant is the fact that as head of the secret prison in Thailand, Gina Haspel followed each day of Abu Zubaydah's torture from Aug. 4 to 23, 2002, and she alone had the responsibility to end this torture but failed to do so," the submission to German prosecutors states.

It also cites the case of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing in 2000, who was waterboarded at Cat's Eye base in November 2002.

Both men are held at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In a separate legal proceeding, Europe's top human-rights court ruled in 2014 that Poland had violated the rights of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri by allowing the CIA to imprison them secretly on Polish soil from 2002 to 2003 and facilitate conditions under which they were tortured.