Sleep deprivation was among the techniques approved by the U.S. Department of Justice and applied by the Central Intelligence Agency to high-value detainees as part of the post-September 11 enhanced interrogation program. It is considered, in John Kiriakou’s assessment, “clearly worse than waterboarding.”[1][2]
Physiology
Research by the American Psychological Association on sleep deprivation found that humans “begin to go insane at seven days with no sleep” and “begin to die of organ failure with 99 days without sleep.”[2]
CIA authorization and practice
The CIA was authorized to keep prisoners awake for up to 12 days — well past the 7-day onset of clinical insanity established by the APA literature. “People died from sleep deprivation.”[3]
The 2014 Senate Torture Report documented sleep deprivation of up to 180 hours (approximately 7.5 days) with prisoners “hands shackled above their heads” in stress positions throughout.[4]
Documented permanent psychiatric injury
Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a September 11 co-conspirator, was rendered permanently clinically insane by CIA sleep deprivation. The diagnosis is the Pentagon’s own — “the Pentagon’s psychiatrist who’s saying he’s insane, not his defense attorneys” — and bin al-Shibh has been declared by the Department of Defense as unable to be tried.[5][6]