Dry-boarding is a torture method that induces the first stages of death by asphyxiation.[1][2][3][4] Unlike waterboarding, where water is poured on a wet cloth placed over a supine subject's airways, so their breathing slowly fills their lungs with water, dryboarding induces asphyxiation through stuffing the subject's airways with rags, then taping shut their mouth and nose. It is among techniques used by the United States during its war on terror: CIA and military agents under the Bush administration described this as among enhanced interrogation techniques. It has since legally been defined by US courts as torture.
Ali Saleh al-Marri, a legal resident of the United States, was arrested while in graduate school. After being classified by the Department of Defense as an enemy combatant, he was held in a Navy brig in the USA. He described to his lawyer that, during his early interrogation, agents stuffed rags down his throat and then taped his mouth and nose shut.[2][3] His attorney described this procedure as dry-boarding. This material was reported by the press after being received following an eight-year-old FOIA request.
When this information was published in 2011, Almerindo Ojeda, the director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, made the connection to the deaths of three detainees on June 10, 2006, at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. At the time, DOD had said each of the men committed suicide, all on the same night. The NCIS investigative report (2008) described the men as having rags stuffed down their throats. Ojeda and the journalists Tony Bartelme and Scott Horton said this sounded like dry-boarding.[2][3] Ojeda expressed skepticism that the men could have committed suicide by stuffing rags down their throats, then tying their hands behind their backs, and suspending themselves by their necks, as described in the NCIS report of 2008 and DOD accounts. He wrote: "It is clear that dryboarding can dispose, single-handedly, of all the questions we have raised thus far."[3]
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Tony Bartelme (2011-10-12). "Memos detail Navy brig struggle: Military brass were denied OK to move terror suspects from Hanahan". Post and Courier. Archived from the original on 2011-10-16. Retrieved 2011-10-15.
After the 2008 election, President Barack Obama transferred al-Marri's case to the federal court system. Al-Marri then pleaded guilty to conspiracy to support a terrorist group and was sentenced to 15 years.
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Tony Bartelme (2011-11-06). "Do brig interrogations shed light on 3 deaths?". Post and Courier. Archived from the original on 2011-11-10. Retrieved 2011-11-11.
The dryboarding of Mr. al-Marri raises an unavoidable question. Did the three individuals found hanging in Guantanamo die from dryboarding rather than by hanging?
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Almerindo Ojeda (2011-11-03). "Death in Guantanamo: Suicide or Dryboarding?". Truthout. Archived from the original on 2011-11-05. Retrieved 2011-11-11.
The news release was categorical with regards to the self-inflicted nature of the deaths. And the camp commander was equally certain of their hostile intent. Yet the news release was curiously guarded about the manner of these deaths - the three "appear" to have hanged themselves with nooses made of bed sheets and clothing, it said.
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Scott Horton (2011-11-09). ""Dryboarding" and Three Unexplained Deaths at Guantánamo". Harper's Magazine. Archived from the original on 2011-11-12. Retrieved 2011-11-11.
Al-Marri later told his attorneys that interrogators stuffed a sock in his mouth and taped his lips shut with duct tape. Al-Marri said he loosened the tape; the interrogators taped it more tightly. When he started to choke, the interrogators ripped off the tape. Al-Marri's attorney in Charleston, Andy Savage, calls this technique 'dryboarding.'